That picture

A few people have e-mailed asking me about the picture I use as my open graph image. This is the picture in question:

There is no specific why reason I use this painting except that I like it and I think it fits the rest of my open graph image design well and that it is neutral, unlike certain thumbnails we come across on the internet these days.

The painting itself is called ‘The curfew’ and is by John Varley, an English watercolour artist who was ‘particularly skilled at the laying of flat washes of watercolour which suited the placid, contemplative mood that he often sought to evoke’. The painting is in the public domain.

At the back of a smaller version of the same painting is a quote scribbled from Milton’s Il pensoroso—“Oft on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew’s [sic] sound, Over some wide-water'd shore, Swinging low with sullen roar—”. The painting is valued by Christie’s at over £4,000. Personally, another reason I use this is because I connect with the subject of this image: a long figure laying on thr ground and looking at the world from without; casting his eyes across a wide landscape, soaking it all in, perhaps in wonder, perhaps in curiosity, but certainly in solitude.