Thomas Hardy’s references to painters in “Far From the Madding Crowd” (1874)

Charles Dickens's novels are full of references to literature that inspired Dickens (especially "Robinson Crusoe"), and I have also noticed some in Thomas Hardy's novels. But unlike Dickens, Hardy also refers to painters. In "From the Madding Crowd" (1874), he compares Gabriel Oak's dog George's fur to paintings by English painter J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), "as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner’s pictures". That comparison remains in England, but charwoman Maryann Money's "brown complexion" recalls the earlier French painter Poussin (1594-1665) with its "mellow hue of an old sketch in oils—notably some of Nicholas Poussin’s." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 July 2024)