Anderson series of Idylls are picnicky, filled with people happily dancing and singing on the grass. He called the first Bacchanal and the other Idylls. In an interview, Anderson referenced Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté as a modern arcadian idyll but does not mention that it is a picnic.
Anderson began the series in 1955, dropped it, and began again in the 1970s. He continued tinkering with tonality (his term for color values) until he died in 2015. He seems not to have changed two details: the inclusion of a small boat with a white sail that appears in the lower-left or right foreground and a child being held aloft in the background.
Bacchanal (1955)
He explained that he “conceived of these pictures as passive decorations—pictures that stay on the wall and seduce only if one is of a mind to be seduced. I like to think of them shaded by some loggia near a swimming pool with wet pavement, plants, and sunlight.”
Anderson did not comment on why he changed tonalities from green, blue and yellow.
Idyll 4
Featured Image: Idyll 1
See Lennart Anderson, Paintings 1953-2002. Salander-O’Reilly Galleries New York, 2002; “Conversation with Lennart Anderson,” https://paintingperceptions.com/conversation-with-lennart-anderson/#drawing; William Grimes. “Lennart Anderson, Painter Who Put a Modern Twist on Master, Dies at 87,” The New York Times (Oct. 20, 2015); http://www.lennartanderson.com/ArtOfTheRealEssay.html