A brief encounter between:
'Landscape with Hermit' and 'Summer'

Salvator Rosa and Edward Hornel

Both these paintings depict states of ecstasy, religious or emotional. For Hornel it is associated with joyous experiences. The girls in his painting embody the season of summer as a convivial, shared experience. Rosa, painting centuries earlier, wrote to a patron:

'I do not paint to enrich myself but purely for my own satisfaction. I must allow myself to be carried away by the transports of enthusiasm and use my brushes only when I feel myself rapt'.

Both artists provoked controversy. Rosa for his eccentric behaviour, stormy temper and fascination with witchcraft; Hornel for what was deemed to be at the time his 'unrealistic' manner of picture-making. His brightly coloured pattern-making makes it difficult to identify the large white butterfly which the girls are chasing.

Links

• The next brief encounter is: 'Vespers' and 'Eventide: a scene in the Westminster Union'
• Brief Encounters homepage

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