Summary
Josef Israels’s brush once froze a sun-bitten Dutch lane, two clogs, a bobbin of lace, and a boy’s scarlet ears; Arthur Maude’s camera now liquefies that oil into living silver. Across polder grass the size of postage stamps, a flaxen-haired foundling—Marretje—twirls her spindle while the village’s most timid calf of a suitor, Pieter, shuffles behind her shadow like a guilty sundial. Misread glances metastasize: a thimble disappears, gossip ignites, the burgomaster’s braying voice accuses the boy of petty larceny. The foundling is ripped from the only hearth she knows; the lad’s lurcher, sole witness to truth, intercepts a raised pitchfork and dies yelping justice into the wind. Yet the same gale that scatters linen also carries the scent of first hay and forgiveness; when the real thief—a rakish carter with silver buckles—confesses, the lovers’ clasped hands re-stitch the torn fabric of community. The final iris dissolves back into Israels’s ochre and umber, proving that pigment and photons alike tremble at the tremor of a heartbeat.
Synopsis
The painting by the same title was done by Josef Israels, and now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A charming little story is woven around the characters pictured in the painting. The scenes are laid somewhere in Europe, where the peasants wear wooden shoes and make fine lace. The artist has painted a landscape when the characters walk on. Youth and bashful love inspires the painter, and he starts to work putting in the figures. A little drama evolves from innocent circumstances. The suitor is suspected of theft, the adopted child is taken away, and in the fight the pet dog is killed. But love wins out in the end. The production concludes with a shot of the original painting.
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