Ainda do Outono

Isaac Levitan, Autumn (1890).

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«Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling».

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Jane Austen, Persuasion.

«Travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open»

Camille Corot, View of Lormes Early (c. 1840, de Gandalf's Gallery).

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Giuseppe de Nittis, The Serpentine, Hyde Park, London (1878).

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Isaac Levitan, The Evening Church Bells (1892). 

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«It is a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. You do not need a sixth sense for it. It is there if you just close your eyes and breathe softly through your nose; you will hear the whispered message, for all landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper. 'I am watching you -- are you watching yourself in me?' Most travelers hurry too much...the great thing is to try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not to much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly - but with real inward attention. It is to be had for the feeling...you can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle, you'll be there».

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Lawrence Durrell, Spirit Of Place: Letters And Essays On Travel.

A Paisagem

Isaac Levitan, Cloudy day (1895).

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Isaac Levitan, Stormy day (1897).

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Isaac Levitan, The lake (1899-1900).

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«It is the soul that sees; the outward eyes

Present the object, but the Mind descries.

We see nothing till we truly understand it».

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John Constable.

Simplicidade

Charles Courtney Curran, Lotus Lilies (1888, Terra Foundation for American Art).
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Isaac Levitan, Water Lillies (1895)
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«Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?» 

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William Morris.