My favourite painting

Execution of Lady Jane by Paul Delaroche

This is my favourite painting. I don't know why. Maybe someone can tell me?

There was a time I lived not far from the National Gallery and would spend hours every day wandering around, looking at art (mainly by Rembrandt, and if you are wondering, my favourite painting of his is this) but always at this Delaroche painting. It captured me. It touched me in ways I cannot even comprehend and it still does. I get lost in the satiny folds of Lady Jane's gown, in the austere posture of the hangman and the anguish of her ladies in waiting.

I marvel at the cold detachment of the man assisting her to her death. He is presumably a friend, clearly a nobleman, but why isn't he more upset!? I suspect foul play. I bet he pretended to be a friend and secretly doomed her to death for reasons of power and money and prestige.

I love that the scene is painted as if it's a snapshot from the theater play, a scene acted on a stage of black velvet cloth.

I love Lady Jane's hands and the straw the colour of her hair. I imagine that, when her head falls down, it will mix with the straw and it will be impossible to tell where her hair ends and the straw begins.

Why? All these years later and if you ask me what my favourite painting is, my mind immediately jumps to this image.

I don't think it's possible to explain how and why art affects us.

What art does, I've decided, is talk to the spaces between our cells, to our subatomic selves. And it whispers in a language only feelings can understand.

Maybe I don't want to know why this painting affects me so. Maybe it's best to just enjoy that jolt of excitement every time I see it or think of it.

Maybe what I enjoy is The Wonder. And maybe that is all I need.