This little plein aire sketch is called, simply, The Window. My father painted it from the front seat of our rent-a-car near near Niort in Western France. While he was painting, the lady of the house returned and parked her car in the middle of his composition. We explained that he was painting her lovely home, and asked if she would mind moving the car to the side of the driveway. She responded that she couldn’t care less if he painted it, but that, no, she would not move the car an inch. So we waited for two hours until she left again.
It was Spring 2005 and we had been driving all over Brittany for about ten days, searching for subject matter. My father was working toward a one-man show, scheduled for 2007. He and my mother had scoured Brittany before, but it had still yielded some great new material. However, the weather had been miserable for most of this trip, and this lady’s attitude sealed the deal for my mother, father and me. As soon as he finished The Window, we moved much further South, searching for warmer weather and warmer people, in addition to top notch things to paint.
