Every once in a while, I like to give this blog a temporary and unconvincing sheen of refinement by spotlighting a painting. Since the current while is almost over and i haven’t written about a painting in ages, it’s high time I do so again. Our subject will be a painting by Sweden’s most famous painter: Carl Larsson. He lived from about his birth to his death, which happened in 1919. Somewhere between those two points,1 he made Schackspelet, i. e. The chess game.
Sadly, like many film directors we’ve discussed, Larsson seems to have used our royal game’s appeal to lure in people, while he actually wanted to showcase something else, in this case the splendour of an exuberant bouquet basking in the spring sunlight filtering through the window. The bastard.
Or perhaps he’s just trying to spare us the sight of two ignorant children mulling about with the pieces, unhindered by any notion of the game. In fact, although it’s very hard to make out the actual position, it’s very easy to see that they’re both playing at the same time.
I was ready to make a slapdash reconstruction of the position and then moan incessantly about the gall of these creatures to mistreat our game. But then I noticed that one of red’s pieces, probably the king, has been toppled over. And now I think that we actually caught them at the one moment were both players handle pieces simultaneously: they’re setting up the pieces for the next game. So of course the position would look weird.
So I won’t attempt a reconstruction. Instead, I’ll launch a question about cultural history. In this painting, there’s another painting on the wall. Surely, there’s a painting somewhere in which there’s a painting with a painting in it. How many levels deep can we get?2
Realism: 5/5 I guess? It seems unfair to give any other grade for putting the pieces back. Especially since I can’t even make out the remnants of the previous game.
Probable winner: White apparently won the previous game. If I had bad to bet on the next one, I’d say her chances are better, mainly because she seems considerably older.
1. [Presumably. I admit I didn’t check.] ↩
2. [Escher doesn’t count, by the way. The Prentententoonstelling is very cute, but it’s not in the spirit of the question.] ↩