While we were at the National Gallery in Washington DC yesterday I was reminded how difficult it is to paint rocks to look like rocks and stones to look like stones.
I marvelled though at how well some painters do it !
You would think that since rocks have basically nondescript rough uneven random surfaces, that capturing the essential rock 'look' in a painting would be a fairly simple thing to do, but no.
It seems strange that painting 'believable' looking rocks and capturing their essence is nearly as difficult as doing portraiture. It's hard to get it 'right'.
Below are some of the better rock and stone 'portraits' we saw.
This is a close up of an Arnold Bocklin painting.
Interestingly, in The Sanctuary of Hercules by Arnold Bocklin, it doesn't seem to matter that the actual stonework he is depicting is questionable, as far as style, somehow Arnold (like a lot of wallers I know) still gets it to look 'right'.
