Wednesday we looked at Pissarro's painting of The Vegetable Garden with Trees at Pontoise. Today, we're in the same springtime, the same garden, but in a different part of the property. This wonderfully lush garden must have required lots of time and effort to keep it all flowering so abundantly.
But this garden scene is more interesting for the addition of the lady with the young child. Here, a lovely 19th century lady, dressed in a light, white dress, and holding a parasol over her head, has turned her attention to the little girl who is entertaining her with a toy trumpet.We see other toys on the ground around the child's feet.
Who are these two? Are they Pissarro's relatives who have served as models? Is this a nanny who has the care of the young one? It doesn't really matter. What matters is the charm and the right-ness of it all - that the woman has turned and given her complete attention to the child. If we zoomed in on the lady's face, we'd be able to see she is smiling.
I was in a diner a year or so ago when a young father came in with his five or six year old boy. Even before looking at the menu, the father opened up his laptop, creating a wall between himself and the boy, who started shredding paper napkins and heaping the scraps up into a pile. What a missed opportunity.
I was pastor to a small rural parish some years ago. Someone introduced us to an African nun who had opened a school community for AIDS orphaned children. We raised $25,000 in a short period of time and bought her the truck she needed to build a permanent building. Maybe this Lent is inviting us to do something for children.
