Jay Hall Connaway: Museum Analysis

For my third museum visit I went to the museum of fine arts in St. Petersburg on the 21st of April. This museum had everything from classical antiquity sculptures to contemporary abstract art. The piece that I am going to discuss in detail is titled Encroachment and was painted by Jay Hall Connaway. When first looking at this oil painting, aspects of the scenery stand out most. The painting depicts waves crashing into rocks along the coastline. In particular, there is one wave that is in the process of falling down onto the rocks. There is water mist in the air from this and the ocean is also flowing in-between some of the rocks. Overall, this painting was done with thick brush strokes, however, in the background there is still the use of atmospheric perspective as there is less detail farther away. The rocks in this painting are brown and the sky and ocean are blue with some …show more content…
The sky in the background is in a shade that gives it a grey blue color. This serves a couple purposes. First, it lessens the details in the background providing the atmospheric effect. Second, it places more emphasis on other aspects of the painting. When wondering what it draws emphasis to, the crashing wave stands out. This wave has a tint of blue that is approaching that of a baby blue. By doing this the importance of the wave is highlighted. Besides this, some of the faces of the rocks upon which the wave is crashing are in a lighter tint than the rest of the rocks that are shaded. This serves to immediately draw the viewer’s eye from the wave into the rocks. For how much emphasis is on this wave that is crashing into the rocks, I think there is more meaning then to just show the power of the ocean. Since the rocks are fixated and the waves are fluid, they could symbolize bombardment of challenges upon a person. The painter did live in from 1893-1970 so maybe it has to do with the Great