Recreation, Jerome Thompson, 1857, oil on canvas, 40 1/2”x 56”, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum

Ideas of the quality of the lives of people pervaded art of the 19th century. For example, the aesthetics of the Impressionists, centered in Paris of the 1870s, included roots in the movement of Realism, thus they explored everyday life, modernity, and the subject of leisure. Leisure is specific to Impressionist study. Consider Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s the Boating Party or Bal du moulin de la Galette—-each painting is a rooted example of the idea. Monet and colleagues were not directly political artists. There are no guns in Impressionist works. Degas’ dancers interestingly are at work, labor was strongly a subject in general during the investigations of the period, yet Degas’ dancers are within the notion of ‘art’ as an activity differentiated and included in the realm of leisure. Art, though a significant labor, refrains from announcing it. Instead, there is the ease of a dancer, the necessity of the art being the focus, not the exercise.

For some artists of the 19th century the rejection of politics as subject matter offered the effects of color and light as the sun filled expanse they needed to explore—they exemplified modernity as a landing party of the now.

So, the time frame of Jerome Thompson’s painting, Recreation, is rich with discussion of working life and time off. The painting offers marvelous artistry for our admiration and to some degree defines attitudes of nature, rest, and peaceful contemplation.

Who is Jerome Thompson? I am purposely stalling, to stay here, and experience this one painting. As an art educator how glorious it is to not know, to let a work unravel secrets.

My first observation is the figure reclining on the right, my eye settled there. We see the vision of the character gazing into the activity of the group but not the adjacent figure who is a mystery, with the backside to us, the character’s attention is solitary. One’s eye might follow hers to the figure below and then to the distant couple walking. Is there romance in her thoughts? In the long red dress, with figurative containment, the character is set apart from the activity of the group. I find some melancholy as there is a feeling of separation and longing. The reclining figure below looks elsewhere.

The central activity involves three people. The player of the flute with two distinct listeners. The admirers’ expressions are representations of personality. Are they sisters? The inner most of the two has a twist to her mouth while the other gazes with soft eyes.

The couple on the left counter the couple on the right. In this case the man looks lovingly upon the woman while she is somewhat aloof. Behind them the picnic fire smolders. The basket is nicely rendered. In the foreground a bottle is kept cold in a spring.

The expansive landscape, trees, foliage, and receding atmospheric light support the scene as a day of reflection in the comforts of nature. The player of music completes the scene as a harbinger of sweet romance and the divine possibility of the whole.

Following this visit my companion and I left the museum to stroll in Golden Gate Park. The meaning of the painting impressed me as I saw and felt the lovely environment.

By Drew Burgess

Drew Burgess is a studio art and art history professor at the College of Alameda of the Peralta Community College District of California.

Cite this page as: Drew Burgess, “Recreation by Jerome Thompson at the de Young” July 14, 2024, https://www.drewburgess.art/museum-visits/recreation-jerome -thompson/

Additional resources:
https://www.famsf.org/artworks/recreation