Actually, this is a special painting because it's a Fritz von Uhde landscape—one of the very few. A beach-scape. We see the horizontal sandy beach, then the sandy shore line, then the waves, then the thin line of the horizon and something of the sky. There's a beached wooden ship. Maybe it's waiting for the tide to come back in and lift it. Or is it a shipwreck? We can see the effects of the brisk wind—the waves are white-capped, the beach chairs with billowing cloth canopies and clothes snapping on the line in the bottom right corner. Those are perhaps changing rooms next to the boat and someone's big dog.
It's a wonderful painting of earth, wind, water and sky. Franciscan Brother Rufino Aragoza is a musician and composer. He has created a pleasant piece called Sacred Creation that's nice to hear as we consider this painting. Click here to listen to the song. (You can skip the ads). It's the refrain that I find to be especially lovely: Sacred the land, sacred the water, sacred the sky, holy and true, sacred all life, sacred each other; all reflect God who is good.
