Henri Baert, Two rabbits, 1842, Gavin Graham Gallery, London, UK. Detail.
I had already written about eggs and how often they feature in art (quirky…). This Easter it is time for another symbol: the Easter Bunny! The cute little rabbit believed to bring Easter eggs to children originated from the German Lutheran tradition in which the wild hare originally played the role of a judge of children’s behavior at the start of the season of Eastertide when only the good ones would get their sweet eggs. Discover some Easter bunny paintings.
As I searched for some paintings featuring bunnies, I sadly discovered that most of them featured as a hunting game (think of all these still lifes with a hanging rabbit and other yummy spoils…). I’ll spare you this traumatic experience and instead show rabbits that seem more than alive.
Munching carrots is always a tasty idea for a rabbit. Much better than a single enormous cabbage leaf, I dare to say.
This cute little bunny must be an all-favorite, look at his lovely pink ribbon! No surprise this lady wants to sit next to it. Although the bunny looks to me more like a later addition to this highly Japonist in style (two-dimensionality, S-shaped woman, all space filled with the pattern) Nabis work.
Many of Marc Chagall’s paintings are dreamy and fairy-tale-like, but this bunny painting, what a weird one it is! A giant viola rabbit carrying a naked woman on its back can happen only in dreams, where the ground can be in the sky and the moon is as low as it almost touches the sea… Feels very Surrealist, especially since I’m not sure how to interpret the rabbit’s facial expression.
A follow up from Surrealism, this time we enter a trans-avant-garde world created by Oleg Holosiy, a Ukrainian painter. He was a main representative of the postmodern generation, the so-called New Ukrainian Wave, which emerged during the late Soviet period. Feels like a scene from a category B horror movie.
This scene is so tranquil and the colors so warm that looking at this work makes me feel happy. I feel I could play with these bunnies in the field this instant. Who would have thought that Vincent van Gogh painted other animals than birds?
To finish off the selection of bunny paintings I’ve chosen this delightful print by Utagawa Hiroshige. Isn’t it just beautiful? A little blue, a little green and pink, and we have a wonderful scene permeated with silence and an evening contemplation.
Happy Easter everyone, hope you’ll find some time to play with your favorite bunnies! Do you know other nice bunny paintings?
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Magda, art historian and Italianist, she writes about art because she cannot make it herself. She loves committed and political artists like Ai Weiwei or the Futurists; like Joseph Beuys she believes that art can change us and we can change the world.
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