“Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it's only that I'm not able to express it...And what beautiful things there are at every step, that even the most hopeless man must feel to be beautiful! Look at a child! Look at God's sunrise! Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you!” [1]
Three minutes before his expected death,
he is able to see life carefully for the first time
[1]Dostoyevsky, F. (translated by Alan Myers)(1998b) The Idiot. Oxford University Press, USA.
Oil on Linen
550 cm x 220 cm
“Nearing death, Ivan is going through a range of epiphanies
he becomes newly sensitive to nature,
and to the ordinary kindness of his manservant” [2]
[2]Tolstoy, L. (translated by Anthony Briggs) (2009) War and peace. Penguin UK.