'He Turned Their Waters into Blood' – (Erastus Salisbury Field) Previous Next


Artist:

Date: 1880

Size: 95 x 122 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

Dozens of light-skinned men and women gather around clusters of columns and sandstone-colored buildings that line a crimson-red river to our right in this horizontal painting. The center of the painting is dominated by a structure made up of three rows of three columns each, which hold up a flat-topped roof. A similar structure angles into the distance along the left edge of the painting. The columns of these two structures are carved with bands showing people separated by rings of vertical lines. The capitals are carved with stylized leaves. Just beyond the columns to our left, a blocky, rose-pink structure is carved with more people, seated or standing singly or in pairs. More rectangular, parchment-brown buildings extend into the distance along the water’s edge. The people gathered along the riverbank wear robes and tunics in deep blue or black, bright white, or saturated tones of cobalt blue, ruby red, or shell pink. Standing within the columns of the central structure, a crowned, bearded man wearing an emerald-green robe under a scarlet-red cloak gestures to our right, toward the red river. A woman nearby, wearing lapis blue and also crowned, watches with hands flung up as a person pours red liquid from a bucket. Most of the other people look or gesture toward the river, which winds in deep S-curves from the horizon line, which comes about two-thirds of the way up the composition, through sage-green fields, to the town. A single, white lightning bolt zigzags down from a white cloud in an otherwise navy-blue sky above.

This artwork is in the public domain.

Artist

Download

Click here to download

Permissions

Free for non commercial use. See below.

Public domain

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark.

This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.


Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Côte d'Ivoire has a general copyright term of 99 years and Honduras has 75 years, but they do implement that rule of the shorter term.