This is a new painting that is about 8″ high by 26″ wide on paper. I call this piece Azilum, using the French form of asylum or place of refuge. There is a place not too far from here in Northern Pennsylvania that is called French Azilum, which was formed around the time of the French Revolution as a place where the aristocracy forced to flee the guillotine could find refuge. While the French Revolution was based very much on our American Revolutionary principles, many members of the aristocracy had helped our cause in many ways, including fighting alongside us, and when the tide turned at home against them, we offered them a place to which they could escape.
French Azilum was built on 1600 acres of land along the Susquehanna River in Bradford County and was a relatively short lived experiment, pretty much ending when Napoleon offered repatriation for these exiles. The place was pretty much gone by 1803 as the population disbanded, having left for France and other locations here in the states. The dream of the French Court regrouping in the Pennsylvania wilderness never really came about.
I don’t know that this piece has any direct connection with French Azilum but the dream of safe haven that it embodies certainly does fit the bill here. The warmth and intensity of the colors make it very inviting and there is a tangible sense of calm around the central Red Tree. A very meditative quality, far removed from the dangers and influence of the outside world. Something that I think was probably hoped for by those exiled Frenchmen in their shangri-la on the Susquehanna back in the day.
Redtree Times 
Kind of ironic that those who supported (and benefited from) the monarchy in France should seek refuge in a country that had so recently thrown off the yoke of the English monarchy. Not to mention those fleeing French colonies in the Caribbean when the abolition of slavery there upset the social order. I think it’s not so much that “we offered them a place” as that they had the (ill-gotten?) wealth with which to purchase land. You could say they were the 1% after the 99% occupied Paris. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Yes, it makes me wonder how strongly the French would have supported us in our revolution if they could have seen the long-term effects of its principles in their own country. They instead saw our revolution as merely an isolated affair and a great way of getting back at their rival, the Brits. Short-sightedness gets you every time.
One of the blogs I read regularly is still on my old blogsurfer page, as is yours. They sit next to each other, and I had to smile when I clicked on the page today and saw your painting next to her photographs of Colonial Beach, Virginia.
The similarity of colors is immediately striking, and the feel of your painting seems to capture the tone of the empty streets of her town.
Beyond that, Colonial Beach was known as the “Playground on the Potomac” – a nice echo of “shangri-la on the Susquehanna”. The histories are quite different, but the visual similarity is delightful.
I had never heard of Colonial Beach. I really find these places that fade over time, going from boomtowns to near ghost towns, very interesting. I have written here about Forestport in the Adirondacks, which was one such place. There is a wealth of stories from these places that will probably never be told or even known which is a shame.