Under the Jacaranda

[alfredo]

In 1903
a Jacaranda tree
so high it paints a lilac sky
and sprinkles the same about the path
beneath the feet,
of the artist's wife
who holds above a red umbrella
and he sits opposite, in a soft hat.
And laid before them,
afternoon tea poured by the maid
wearing an apron and cap
of white bobbin lace
over Edwardian black.

This adored
tree planted in 1864
was over blown
by a 1979 cyclone
and that,
as they say,
....was that.

Queensland's most famous painting by R.Godfrey Rivers.
www.humanflowerproject.com/index.php/weblog/comments/987/

[mfwilkie]

Thanks for the link to a beautiful picture, 'fredo.

A question, though: my eye sees the canopy of the tree as a shade of light mauve, bending more toward lilac. Mauve in my mind, when I hear the term, is the color seen in this link:

Mauve (French form of Malva, "mallow") is a pale lavender-lilac color, one of many in the range of purples.

When you get a chance, look up the term, ekphrastic poem.

You might build a story around these three people.

Maggie

[alfredo]

On the question of colour ..the original art work has the colour described (by the gallery) as purple. The web site also refers to the colour of jacaranda in the same way. I quite like Lilac as a description here ..what do others think?

Ekphrastic.


I could have been intimately nay emphatically, aware of ekphrastic poems but alas I was not, thank you . I found no, discovered:-


Ekphrasis, the Greek word for description, dates back to ancient rhetorical practices and has continued to be variously defined by twentieth-century writers from Gertrude Stein, the "literary cubist" who first published her prose poem portraits "Matisse" and "Picasso" in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work, to Frank O'Hara, poet and curator for The Museum of Modern Art, whose love poem "Sharing a Coke with You" ambitiously invokes paintings by Marcel Duchamp and Marino Marini, as well as two "schools" of art, Futurism and Impressionism. ...

[sandpiper]

I like, and I like lilac...
the only thing I'd look at is possibly instead of "who sits holding a red umbrella",
possibly just "who holds a red umbrella".

well done.
-piper

[alfredo]

Dear Sandpiper
I took a diaper
an’ wiped
purple to lilac;
suspect it suits my dialect


On a serious note , I believe 'sits" completes the word picture..but unnecessary if and only if, one looks at the painting.
Anyhow I have worked in it SITS (hope it fits) alongside him.