A little word on art

I have loved the opportunity to visit some of the most famous art museums while I have been here in Spain. Every time you walk into an art museum you are subjecting yourself to a different viewpoint on life. Sometimes I will walk down a whole wall of art and not be too affected, othertimes there are things that catch my eye. Yesterday I visited the Thyssen Museum in Madrid. It specialized in Early impressionism all the way into Fauvism and Avant-Garde. This period of art is my favorite, so you can imagine what a fun experience it was for me. The first painting of the women on the hill was my favorite painting in the museum. I had never heard of the painter so I came home and did a little homework. His name is Josef Israels and he is a Dutch realist painter. He painted this in 1900. His other works were similar to this. He painted simple peasants or fisherman. I love this girl because I can relate to her. She is just up there looking out to sea and no one knows what she is thinking and no one needs to know what she is thinking, but we can tell she is just enjoying the moment.
The painting in the middle not only intrigued me because it is Degas, but because it is an example of irony in painting. It's title is Racehorses in a Landscape. There lies the irony, because racehorses don't belong in the wilderness, they are taken to be trained on courses. It is beautiful to me because these horses have taken a break from their lives of training and competing and are taking a stroll through the landscape. Maybe Degas is not meaning to paint an ironic situation at all, but maybe he is pointing out that we are never truly set to do one thing. We have freedom to move around sometimes.
The last one caught my eye because my first instinct told me that it was a painting in Spain. Then I checked the artist and he didn't have a Spanish name, but the title said Plaza de Merced, Ronda. I was so happy to see that is was in Spain. Ronda is a little town in the south of Spain. This is a beautiful colorful depiction of a typical street in some of the smaller cities I have visited in Spain. The artist is actually American and most of his work is done in America. He took a trip to Spain and has a little collection of paintings from Granada, Cordoba, Ronda, and a couple others down in Andalucia.