The Bersaglieri
This painting depicts a military parade marching on a light orange street through a city adorned with countless colorful flags. The scene shows soldiers in olive uniforms walking in a long line towards the right, with a section at the front playing large golden instruments like tubas and horns. One of the soldiers at the front holds up a flag with long vertical stripes of green, red, and white, with a red, white, and gold crest in the center. On either side of the parade, the street is lined with onlookers painted in dots of white, tan, blue, black, and pink. The buildings in the background are painted in colorful shades of blue, white, tan and pink, and towards the left they fade into a misty blue-gray color. A large flag takes up the top right corner, and it has the same design as the one that the man in the parade is holding. The brushstrokes in the painting are thick and visible.
Colors in this work
Details
- Artist
- George Luks
- Date
- 1918
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 101.9 x 151.5 cm (40 1/8 x 59 5/8 in.) framed: 119.1 x 169.6 x 7 cm (46 7/8 x 66 3/4 x 2 3/4 in.)
- Department
- CAB
- Holding institution
- National Gallery of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- national-gallery-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Gift of the Avalon Foundation
Art Genome Taxonomy
12 tags
Subject Matter
-
War and Military Both · 99%
The catalog describes a military parade, and the image shows uniformed soldiers marching in formation with flags and band instruments.
-
Crowds Visual · 98%
Numerous soldiers, musicians, flag bearers, and spectators occupy the street and compress the pictorial space.
-
Movement Visual · 98%
Repeated marching figures, extended legs, instrument diagonals, and angled flags create a clear sense of forward motion.
-
City Scenes Visual · 98%
The parade takes place on a broad urban street bordered by multistory buildings and onlookers.
-
Performing Arts Visual · 92%
Several prominently depicted figures carry large brass instruments, indicating a marching musical ensemble or band.
-
Haze Both · 93%
The left side of the urban background visibly dissolves into a soft blue-gray atmospheric field, consistent with the catalog’s description of a misty distance.
Visual Qualities
-
Dense Composition Visual · 98%
Overlapping figures, flags, instruments, spectators, and architectural forms extend across nearly the entire canvas.
-
Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 94%
The painting uses strong warm oranges and reds alongside olive green, blue-gray, white, and gold accents.
Medium and Techniques
-
Painting Both · 99%
The National Gallery of Art classifies the work as a painting, and the image visibly presents a two-dimensional painted scene.
-
Oil Painting Metadata · 100%
The catalog identifies the medium as oil on canvas.
-
Large Brushstrokes/Loose Brushwork Both · 99%
The catalog specifically notes thick, visible brushstrokes, which are also clearly apparent across the soldiers, buildings, flags, and pavement.
Time Periods
-
1918 - 1939 (Interwar) Art Metadata · 100%
The work is dated 1918, which falls within the cataloged 1918–1939 interwar period.
Source & rights
George Luks. The Bersaglieri. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
High-resolution sources
- IIIF image service ↗ 20,021 × 13,364 · National Gallery Of Art · Available