This painting is an interpretation of the original oil on canvas painted by Eva Gonzales that is on display at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
The curiosity for this study was to take a painting that almost every observer seemed to walked right past and enhance it some way, shape, or form to grab their attention. Standing in the Gallery and looking at the other works on the wall, I decided to change the story and introduce a red-green complementary relationship.
The starting point was to extract the two figures from Gonzales’ work and change the color of the child’s clothing to be the complement of the Nanny’s clothing. On the left of Gonzales’s work hung Manet’s The Railway. I extracted the railroad scene and introduced a park bench for the Nanny to sit on instead of a stool. With that change, I replaced the umbrella with a carpet bag, indicative of the period. The idea for the ground came from a piece from Manet’s other work in that same gallery, The Old Musician. Finally, looking around the gallery, I based the buildings in the distance on the work from Auguste Renoir, Pont Neuf, Paris.
The story to be told was now totally different. The last ingredient was observer feedback, which came with very subtle changes, with just one person preferring the blues in Manet’s The Railway. What was striking, however, was that the observers were now taking pictures of Gonzales’ work and my interpretation, rather than just walking right past it.