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Ishmael
By Jean Charles Cazin (1840-1901)
In the Luxembourg, Paris
The artist has chosen a dramatic subject. Abraham's wife Sarah demanded that he should cast out from his dwelling the bondwoman Hagar, with Ishmael, the son she had borne him. "And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. And the water was spent in the bottle."
Usually Cazin chose the mysterious twilight hours for the time of his pictures. He delighted in the tender melancholy of sundown, when the long, dark shadows spread themselves over the earth and the universe seems lulled to forgetfulness beneath the quiet moon. He comes into the daylight in this picture, but the same gentle melancholy seems to brood over his canvas, the quietness of the arid waste of desert replacing the silent spaces of the dusk, and the parching, brazen sun suggesting the diffused brilliance of the moonshine.
He loved simplicity in his landscapes and in his subjects, and when he associated them with human feelings, with which the Bible stories or the old legends inspired him, he made his scenes harmonise with their spirit in a very subtle manner. This touch of art, as one may describe it, is well shown in the present picture, where the general suggestion of loneliness and hopelessness accords well the despair of Hagar.
In such subjects he was at his best, and his influence as a creator of sentiment in landscape has made itself felt in French and German painting. Though his costumes are sometimes more suggestive of the present than of the past, they are made so much a part of the spirit of the scene that they never seem otherwise than appropriate.
From the book "Famous Paintings" printed in 1913.
Large files of this public domain print are available at Stock Photos at Songs of Praise
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Online "Name the Painting"
Art Works of Cazin
at Art Net.com
Jean Charles Cazin
at Wikipedia
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