"Garden Study of the Vickers Children" by John Singer Sargent.

Every so often, I re-read Marilynne Robinson's perfect 2004 novel, Gilead:

There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don't know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash.

Somehow, the phrase "and the trees were glistening and very wet" is stuck in my head. In less-capable hands, "glistening and very wet" would seem duplicative, unnecessary. In Robinson's, they flow effortlessly out of the protagonist's mind. ❧