219. Flute player

219. Flute player, 2025, oil on linen, 40 × 30cm, (Darryn Ansted)

I decided to write about this painting as a blog post because there is more to say than a social media post can contain. It is not that it is particularly meaningful compared to other paintings. I just find that it gets harder and harder to compress my reflection on a painting into a short note on social media.

This painting is perhaps inspired by Manet’s painting of a young boy playing a flute. Inspired is however too strong a word. Maybe it was ‘enabled’ by Manet, or I was assissted in conceiving it by knowing about the Manet painting. I am definitely not trying to place it into a comparison with that painting.

It is a painting that will be recognizable to people in Geseke. It depicts a young girl playing the flute as part of a marching band that parade through the town of Geseke on the annual occasion of Schuetzenfest. This is a town festival that takes place every year and allows people to come out, congregate and join in several days of merriment.

I have enjoyed the event a couple of times from the margin. I had been turning over the idea of painting a flute player from the event, in my head. I asked my wife to ask around to see if anyone was interested to come to the studio and model for a painting. Nobody anwered. When Schuetzenfest came around last year I thought I would just take it upon myself to go and take a photo and see what it produced. It was quite strange to be photographing a marching band in the middle of a festival. I did not look back through the photos for several months.

Separately, I had started to paint portraits of people. Normally, at least for the past decade I would work from life. However, I recently tried to move from the Middle Ages to the ‘modern world’ in my philosophy a little more and decided to work from a photograph. This would allow allow the possibility of capturing a more spontaneous moment, which I had missed from the hours-long sittings with models. This approach was also boosted by looking at ‘tronies’ - paintings from the Northern Renaissance, by people like Adriaan Brouwer showing random people cavorting in odd gestures - and yet further boosted by visiting the Franz Halz exhibition in Berlin. Hals didn’t work from photographs but he captured spontaneous expressions such as smiles with remarkable skill.

So, here we are. The painting of a Flute player from a marching band at the Geseke Schuetzenfest. That is the back story of the painting. Interpretation is up to you.