title: Painted Horses

(see the full-size close-up below)

These almost life-size greenish bronze rampant stallions, and mermaids stopped in mid-frolic in the gushing glitter of silver spray from the magnificent fountains at Paris’ Place de l’Observatoire, have done their thing in all their glory for generations of Parisians and visitors. Seeing them, one cannot help but think about the renowned artists and writers who through the years passed these figures and paused to reflect on their inherent beauty. A young Ernest Hemingway passed them often as he walked toward the Luxembourg Gardens. He remembered them in his Green Hills of Africa [Scribners 1935] recalling the beauty he saw in these fountains with "water sheen rippling on the bronze of horses’ manes, bronze breasts and shoulders, green under thin-flowing water…"

It was this I tried to capture one day in early May on my way to the Luxembourg, striving to frame the features Hemingway enjoyed most…the forequarters of two rearing stallions, frozen in the spray of gem-light waters, their flanks reflecting a myriad colorful sparkles as though from the flanks of carrousel mustangs in all their glitter and glory.

Painted Horses speak for themselves. One final touch: I added a glint of fire in the stallion’s eye to give it life. For, in the eye of the beholder he too remembers what he has seen.

This is a close-up image from the full-size print, showing the detail involved