Gray\'s the Greek Lovers Henry

Gray's The Greek Lovers

Henry Peters Gray's the Greek Lovers is a large (401/4" by 511/2") oil on canvas depicting a woman sitting with a lute and a man leaning up against a tree. Both figures are youthful; though not children, they are possibly in late adolescence or early adulthood. The lute is held completely vertical by the woman, whose left hand grips the neck of the instrument just below the sharp angle the precedes the tuning keys. Her right hand drifts near the base of the lute, where the instrument would be played, as if she has either just stopped playing or is about to start. Her head is coked to the side and her eyes raised to the man's face. He, on the other hand, has his eyes cast down. Between them in the distance can be seen a building of some sort and a rough, pre-mountainous and verdant landscape. The blue sky and white clouds both seem to be transitioning into something darker and more ominous, which is matched by the darkness of the tree against which the male figure leans.

The perspective of this painting appears almost atmospheric as opposed to linear -- there being no vanishing point, the only things that distinguish foreground from background are size and color. The two lovers appear to be as much a part of their world as anything else in the painting. Their size, however, makes them clearly foregrounded and the focus of the painting. Their color, too, distinguishes them; the woman's white flowing top is the lightest thing both in color and tone in the entire painting; the man's clothes, though mostly of a darker color, are also of a light value. Value, in fact, is one of the two most informative design elements of this painting. Beyond just the clothes that the two figures are wearing, value is also used to add mood to the painting. The tree that the man is leaning against, if painted the same basic color with a lighter value, would have drastically changed the meaning and impact of this painting. Both leaves and trunk have a very dark value, matching the somberness and pensiveness that can be seen on the two lovers' faces. This tone is also matched by the more distant landscape and all but the farthest reaches of the sky. The other most prominent element of this painting is direction. There is a heavy emphasis on the vertical at work here; the lute in the foreground is directly vertical, with the line created by the neck traveling most f the way from the bottom to the top of the painting. The tree the man is leaning against, the tree behind that, and also a vertically jutting rock just beneath the tower of the distant building and a towering cloud just off the lute's neck all reinforce this sense of vertical.

Tone and line contribute greatly to the two most prominent principles of design at work in the Greek Lovers. Tone produces many instances of harmony, and several of disharmony. The female figure is generally harmonious with her surroundings; her light top flows into the lighter sky to her right (viewer's left), while her other side is slightly shadowed matching the darker value of the sky above it. The man, in contrast to this, is more our of harmony with his immediate environment; though the colors of his clothes are darker then the females, the values are almost as light, yet the value of the tree he is up against is very dark. This creates a sense of disharmony that matches his gaze, which is cast downwards away from his lover. This strange harmony/disharmony juxtaposition is mirrored in the balance of the painting. The repeated vertical lines in the trees, towers, and especially the neck of the lute all create a sense of balance and order. Careful observation reveals that the woman's torso and arm repeat this vertical line, while the man's posture creates a subtle diagonal. Just as the woman is harmonious and the man not, she is in balance and he is somehow out of it.