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Picturing a World

Garden party in February

A snowy recent post at the Ephemeral New York blog site sent me to the marvellous website of The Phillips Collection, which somehow I had missed up to now. In general, Beal’s work is more pertinent to my new novel set in New York in the 20th C than to Where the Light Falls, but this painting immediately made me think of the Renicks’ garden party in the Paris of 1879—more trees, less formality maybe, but the same spaciousness. And so green! In snowy February 2014, it’s a welcome reminder of summer.

Readers: This blog has reinforced my tendency to connect pictures I find with my own writing. I also sometimes recognize Tolkien's Middle Earth or Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire in photographs or other images. Do you carry fictional worlds in your mind and occasionally enjoy the shock of recognition when you see a picture or walk into a real place that could serve as the setting for favorite fiction?
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