Essay #1

Jihun Rhee

Prof. Kyle Brebner

IERW (04)

07 October 2015

Writing about Painting

There is one picture that sticks out for my mind. When I traveled Wein, Austria, I went to Belvedere palace. Walking through the palace one picture caught my eyes. It is a picture titled <Reading Girl>, by Franz Eybl.

It was quite hard to find out the background story of this art work. The time, when this picture was creating by Franz Eybl, it went kind of going through spring of permission that women could read books. Freedom of women’s reading took over the centuries. Men of power and conservatives beg the question that women’s reading was mental illness. But reading spread out greatly fast between women and then women enlightened because of the books. The painter, Franz Eybl, was a famous portrait painter at Wein high society. Based on this fact, the painter might feel charm from ‘Reading Girl’ or main love interest of him.

The title of the picture is Reading “Girl”, she seems to be in late teens or early twenties. Regarding her appearance, she’s got brown eyes and shining black hair. She wears white blouse. Also her skin is fascinating white. What sets this picture apart from the others is that the color of her hair and skin makes perfect eye catching contrast. Whenever I see this paint, I can get exact feature of reading girl. Her face is not only deeply profound but also innocent. Stefan Bollmann, German author, said about this paint “Like her elegant figure her thought also doesn’t have malice” <Women Who Read Are Dangerous>, 2005.

I found this paint is pretty charming. What I like the most about this art work is face angle of the main character. Without a doubt this angle must contain her most beautiful face. A work of art exposes me to new ideas of reading. It always cheer me up when I have a heap of work to do such as the examination of a thesis for graduation, school work, writing cover letter, etc. The only downside of this picture is that there’s no exact story about picture. But overall, I love this picture. I always feel great when I see it. The first time when I found this picture at Austria is such a mind blowing experience. This is a memory which I treasure. I was mesmerized when I saw it. For now, this picture is enough to quench my thirst for relaxing my mind and though provoking. I hope this picture be more famous.

Even though appreciating paintings don’t provide a great mount of philological studies. I personally think that they are indispensible for my wellbeing life. The reason is they help are worthy opportunity of thinking about people at the past, and also good motivation that I can look back my livelihood.