Like poke microphones into the soil and listen to the earthworms sleeping. Or thermometers and feel the heat from Satan toasting deserving sinners. No other Australian painters then came anywhere close to this expressive almost unnatural coloration which veers close to Fauvism? Then still about 15 years ahead. Another important painting from Antibes area.
Russell has thickly layered paint in a worked up surface in which colour is also experienced as texture, achieving an overall chromatic and visual intensity. In the afternoon is no exception as conservation analysis has revealed an earlier version of this painting underneath in which the colour tones are lighter.
Russell has allowed this to dry before painting over it to achieve the more intense colours in the final version. The reworking occurred soon after the first version as it is the colours and composition of the current painting that Russell describes in his letter to Tom Roberts in The complex interweaving of colours throughout the painting, but particularly visible in the fore and middle grounds, show an artist in full control of his technique to achieve the luminosity he sets out to convey.
The Times, London, 30 November , p3. NOTE : Bold colour again, coarse Impressionist brush textures and a stylised layered composition looking way ahead to Rothko?
NOTE : simple painting but bold. Is this not another proto-Fauvist work? About 15 years before summer of at Collioure. He crossed France in a cart drawn by two horses and took a house for the winter in the ancient seaport of Antibes.
