Caught in the Water Mill, By Juliana Noone

Walking through the PMA the morning of our field trip on February 6th was much like any other time I’ve visited an art museum.  I find myself ambling from room to room channel surfing the artwork on the walls, pausing from time to time to linger over one or another that catches my interest. That morning, however, a painting grabbed a hold of me in a way I haven’t quite experienced before. Walking through the European section on my way to Modern Art I was stopped by Frits Thaulow’s Water Mill. The painting is a trickster. At first glance it looks like a painting of pretty much nothing but water, and it was how well he rendered the water that caught my eye at first, but then it sucked me in. I feel as though I was hypnotized by this painting, and I mean that as no exaggeration. In fact, when I finally tore my eyes off of it Emma said to me, “Wow, you were, like, really into that,” which, to me, was quite an understatement. I walked away from that painting to check out the modern art, but my mind was preoccupied with the Water Mill and I found myself right back at that painting for the duration of our stay there.

The painting is set up in a layer cake composition, but what makes it so hypnotic is that it is also layered towards you, the viewer. Submerged beneath the rippling top layer of the water’s surface are layers and layers of color that loosen and soften as they recede, giving the effect of actually looking into a pool of water. The predominately green center line of the composition is piled with the most layers making it the most in focus. The rendering of the water is tight and detailed with thin swooping brush strokes. The paint becomes thick and textured as it gets closer to the churning water beneath the mill. The strokes become tighter, yet, and more energized and chaotic. The frothy white lines bring your eye to the blue foreground where Thaulow’s strokes slowly loosen and relax. The water calms as it approaches the foreground. It becomes soft and more peaceful, creating a beautiful juxtaposition with the churning water above. After relaxing in the foreground for a while your eye gets pulled back through the currents and to the focused middle layer again, where the churning of the mill sucks your eye to the window between the buildings and launches you into the background. My first impression of the red brick buildings was that they were not nearly as intense or strong as the water in the middle and foreground. Then as I stared at them, the layers broke apart and the painting united itself as the mottled undertones of the buildings emerged and mirrored the soft under layer of the water below.

The relationship of the compositional vertical layers of the painting and the literal layers of paint piled on the canvas creates a mesmerizing marriage of colors. I spent over a half an hour of our time at the museum being pulled up and down, forward and back by the currents of the painting. I felt like a piece of debris at the base of a waterfall. It wasn’t until I got tossed around every inch of it that I felt comfortable walking away. I researched the Norwegian Impressionist painter when I got home and found that his specialty is landscape, and he is no stranger to depictions of hypnotic water scenes. The energy of his brush strokes and his handle on movement and lighting shows his understanding of Impressionism. I would like to get a chance to see more of his work, if only to see if it grabs me as intensely as his Water Mill did.