When I first saw this painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I noticed how the young couple being depicted in the painting was the main focus of attention despite the title of the work being “Springtime.” Although you could tell that the time frame was indeed somewhere around springtime just by looking at the painting, I think that this painting is focused more on the young couple, and based on what I have observed, the main subject of this painting could also be about love.
This was painted by Pierre Auguste Cot, a French painter of academic classicism, and dates around 1873. It is a genre painting; we have no idea who this young man or woman were, or what their social status was. There are no attributes indicating their importance in society. It’s an anonymous couple, with no names given, sitting on a swing in the middle of a deep forest. They are the main focus of the canvas since they are directly in the center foreground. We can tell that they are a couple because of the expressions on their faces and the way that they are staring at each other. The woman figure smiles flirtatiously at the male figure, with her eyes focused on his face. The male figure looks down upon her in the same manner. In addition, the female figure has her arms embraced around the male’s neck, indicating that there is some sort of romance between them.
The male figure wears red clothing while the female figure wears white. The color red is associated with love, while white is associated with cleanliness, purity and virginity. There are small bright red areas on the male figure’s torso, which appear to look like roses, further adding to the romantic air. The woman’s purity and virginity is intensified by the ray of light that hits her bright white silky dress. The red that the man is wearing contrasts with the green tones of the background, making him easy to spot by the viewer, as well as the white dressed woman that he is with. Here it is apparent that Cot wants the attention of his viewers to be drawn on these two figures.
The earthly tones of the forest background provide different hues and saturation of greens for the trees, as well as different saturations and hues of browns for the ground, providing a calming and peaceful atmosphere for the figures. These different saturations and hues are reinforced by the same light source that hits the women’s dress. This light source, which is a ray of light coming from the upper left-hand corner of the canvas, is interesting in that it is focused on one particular area of the forest, while the rest of the light is obscure in the other areas of the painting. It focuses on the area of leaves where the female’s white dress and the male’s left arm are, making those leaves very bright, with their intense hue and saturation. The lighting in the background is less bright and is more faint however. Another significant light source is also focused in the bottom of the canvas, where we can see a small plant that has yet to grow, signifying the potential for love to grow. These variations of light in the forest, including the dark areas underneath the swing that the pair are sitting on, gives the forest a mysterious feel, a sense of fantasy.
The linear painting style makes the composition look smooth, with virtually no sign of any brush strokes. The different tones and hues of the colors, as well as the play with light, gives the painting a sense of 3-dimensional volume. Combine this with the large size of the canvas, I think about 48 X 72, in size, it looks like a window into another world, as if Cot wants us the viewers to step into this mystical world that the figures live in, where love is pure, young, perfect, heavenly and timeless. When you are young and your love is strong, the world around you seems vacant and dreamlike. You wish for that moment to never end.
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