William Brymner, Girl with a Dog, Lower Saint Lawrence
This is a sketch from William Brymner’s painting Girl with a Dog, Lower Saint Lawrence, from 1905, and a reproduction of the painting. The piece caught my attention during a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2017. The subject matter was unusual. A girl sits on the sand, or dirt, wearing what I guess was everyday dress in 1905, and holds a stick in front of her dog. Is she restraining the dog from greeting the viewer? Or is she protecting the dog from us? In the painting she has an expression I would describe as angry or frustrated. I find that my sketch adds more sadness. In the original work she faces the viewer more directly. In the painting she is connected to the land by similarity in value and color, and is held down by a horizontal land form in the middle ground. In my sketch I lightened the light on her hat, separating it from its surrounding values and perhaps connecting it more closely to the sky. I like the comma in the title, separating the protago