Landscape Prints and Drawings Collection

Beginning in the early 1870s, Whistler produced a series of Nocturnes depicting the Thames River, which signaled the artist's transition from more realistic modes of representation to a poetic interpretation of nature influenced by orientalists and aesthetic sentiments. In Nocturne, one of a group of lithotints of river subjects, the artist used veils of lithographic ink to create the moody, atmospheric effects achieved in his painted Nocturnes with translucent washes of paint, which he had been unable to produce in etching or drypoint. Drawing inspiration from Japanese prints, Whistler divided the composition of Nocturne into two separate zones, separated by a high horizon line. This emphasizes a two-dimensional abstract pattern and evokes the sensation of atmosphere far more than it describes the subject. The print's composition, tonal variations, and mood anticipate Whistler's views of Venice, in which the artist would return to the more portable medium of etching, using tonal printing to produce effects of mood and atmosphere. Nocturne was one of a group of lithographs intended to be issued in a limited number of proofs. Due to lack of interest, perhaps an indication of the low status of artistic lithography, only a few impressions of Nocturne, including the present print, were published in this manner. In 1887 a later impression of Nocturne was included in the set known as Art Notes, published by Boussod, Valadon, and Company in an edition of one hundred.

In 1879, sponsored by the Fine Art Society, London, Whistler traveled to Venice, where he rendered some fifty plates of this city during the following fourteen months. Setting out each day in his gondola, the artist worked from nature, drawing directly on the etching plate.

The Riva, No. 2 is one of approximately fifty plates rendered by Whistler during his 1879-80 stay in Venice. In 1886 the London dealer, Dowdeswell and Dowdeswells, published The Riva, No. 2 with other etchings by Whistler in A Set of Twenty-six Etchings, or the Second Venice Set.

In 1909 von Zulow began producing his Monatshefte, a book of months that appeared continuously until 1915, with each month comprising seven images plus a cover. Von Zulow initially produced the images as drawings, but in 1912 he began to print them in linocut, sometimes reproducing earlier designs. These later prints, such as Ziegelhaus (an image from the month of November), were produced as individual sheets bound in a wrapper. Typical of Von Zulow's decorative style, the Monatshefte were executed with heavy black lines reminiscent of stained-glass windows.

Executed primarily for aristocratic patrons, Paul Sandby's landscapes, both imaginary and topographical, present an almost nostalgic, idealized view of man's relationship to nature. Typical of Sandby's capriccios, this drawing depicts an untamed yet gentle landscape that provides sustenance and pleasure for animals and human beings alike, as suggested by the combination of the rural (sheep and shepherd) with the peaceful urban presences (the buildings of a small town across the lake in the distant middle ground) in this watercolor. As such, Hilly Landscape and drawings like it contributed to the development of the rustic and picturesque traditions of English landscape painting.

Comprising twenty-nine lithographs, Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen, etc. is not only one of the finest topographical albums ever produced but is also a landmark in the development of color printmaking (Michael Twyman, 1970, p. 211). Its delicate printing and subtle use of chromolithography testify to the artist's close collaboration with the album's printer, Charles Hullmandel, to whom the album is dedicated in acknowledgment of the printer's many innovations in the technique of lithographic printing.

View of Bracciano is the second of twenty-four full-page lithographs by Edward Lear that were published by T. M'Lean as Views in Rome and Its Environs in 1841. The Grunwald Center impression is from one of the few copies of the book to be hand-colored, perhaps by Lear himself. The first of seven travel books produced by Lear during his extensive journeys through Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, Views in Rome and Its Environs includes examples of the kinds of views that attracted the artist throughout his life: long, panoramic vistas encompassing hills, bodies of water, silent ancient cities, overgrown walls, sparse vegetation, warmth, and stillness.

After reading John Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, William Ward enrolled in his drawing class at the London Working Men's College in 1854. Ruskin's influence over the younger man's career could not have been more complete. He became Ward's mentor, friend, and chief employer, commissioning him in 1858 to copy watercolors by the late J.M.W. Turner. Through his own talent as well as careful attention to materials used and techniques developed by Turner and taught him by Ruskin, Ward became the most accomplished of Turner's many copyists or imitators. Several of the smaller watercolor landscapes attributed to Turner over the years may in fact be by Ward. By 1869 Ruskin, aware of such real and potential difficulties, was signing and annotating Ward's watercolors, not only as a statement of the work's merit but also to ensure proper attribution by dealers and collectors. This drawing is a copy after Turner's view of the Seine between Mantes and Vernon in the Tate Gallery, London (Turner Bequest CCLIX-114), one of the drawings in Turner's French River series of around 1830. The Ward drawing was commissioned by Ruskin and has an inscription indicating his approval of the drawing on July 5, 1877.

Goltzius's primary importance for the history of landscape lies in a small group of drawings dated to the early years of the seventeenth century, which are amongst the earliest depictions of the countryside around Haarlem. While Goltzius's woodcuts were not as influential as his drawings, they are still indicative of the predilection, particularly among Haarlem artists, for more realistic views of contemporary local landscapes rather than the fantastic Flemish vistas that had been in vogue up to this time. Landscape with Farmhouse is part of a series of four chiaroscuro woodcuts depicting various landscapes. While other woodcuts in this series depict Arcadian or Italianate landscapes, this image is the most "Dutch" in composition and anticipates future developments in the genre. Though the fluid, curvilinear strokes are reminiscent of prints and drawings by the sixteenth-century Venetian artist Domenico Campagnola, the rusticity of the scene and the naturalism of individual motifs such as the excreting dog are typically Dutch. The stork, for instance, appears often in Dutch prints and was considered a sign of good luck in seventeenth-century Holland.

Rembrandt's oeuvre includes about three hundred etchings, some twenty-seven of which are landscapes dating from 1640 to 1657, the period in which he painted the majority of his landscape pictures as well. His landscape etchings were inspired by the countryside surrounding Amsterdam but were almost never etched from nature. Rembrandt's work as a printmaker compares with that of no other artist except Hercules Segers in the variety of techniques and papers used, and certainly no other Dutch artist of the period made such a large number of radical revisions to his plates. The house on the right amidst the trees in Cottage and Hay Barn has been identified as Kostverloren, a house along the Amstel that was a readily recognizable landmark for Rembrandt contemporaries and was often depicted in paintings, drawings, and prints by seventeenth-century Dutch artists. Kostverloren, whose name (which means "lost money") was recorded as early as 1563, was built around 1500 on swampy land on the riverbank, which resulted in the expenditure of large sums of money on its preservation by its various owners (Groesbeek 1966, pp. 125-26, pls. 46-48). While Rembrandt depicted an actual site, its placement in relation to the city of Amsterdam, seen at left, is entirely imaginary. Indeed, probably only two of the artist's landscape prints were actually drawn from nature. Rembrandt intentionally juxtaposed the bustling city in the background with the deteriorating house, a symbol of decay. The image could be interpreted moralistically, as illustrating the decay of the farmhouse in the center, whose inhabitants fish rather than tend to their property, as in a drawing of a neglected farmhouse by Jacques de Gheyn (van Regteren Altena 1983, no. 950, pl. 24). In any case, Rembrandt certainly meant the farmhouse in the center to act as a mediating image between the neglected Kostverloren and the busy, crowded city.

While de Grave depicts the town in a traditional cityscape, the presence of the Dutch army is duly indicated by the boat in the center filled with several small figures and two cannons as well as two additional cannons standing on the shore. De Grave worked very closely with two other artists, Valentin Klotz and Barnardus Klotz. The three traveled together throughout the Netherlands, sketching cities and towns and often drawing the same sites and copying one another's drawings. Between 1674 and 1676 they traveled with the Dutch army, sketching the towns they passed through and the activities of the troops at rest.

Watercolor was a favorite medium of Henri-Joseph Harpignies; with ease and spontaneity he worked directly from nature, recording sites throughout the French countryside. In this river landscape he revealed his interest in the subtle nuances of light and atmosphere as he rendered a specific time of day. Less detailed than his landscapes of the 1870s and 1880s, Harpignies's later watercolors are characterized by broad, summary brushwork and an increased emphasis on patterning. His freshness, immediacy, and delicate, transparent colors made him one of the master watercolorists of his time.

Charles Meryon's earliest prints were copies after etchings by old masters such as Karel Dujardin, Salvator Rosa, Adriaen van de Velde, and especially Reynier Nooms, called Zeeman, whose clarity and precision of detail greatly impressed Meryon. These were followed by numerous etchings of the city of Paris, the most famous of which were published between 1850 and 1854 as the series Eaux-Fortes sur Paris, among which Le Pont-au-Change is numbered. Meryon received several important commissions during the late 1850s, and his works were exhibited at the Salon, but he was increasingly plagued by financial hardship and mental instability. In 1859 he met Charles Baudelaire, who greatly admired his prints and tried to foster his artistic career by arranging for the reprinting of Eaux-Fortes sur Paris. Meryon's etchings were exhibited at the Salons of 1863 to 1867, and in 1863 a catalogue of his works was published in the prestigious "Gazette des beaux-arts." Meryon's urban views documented a Paris that was rapidly vanishing in the wake of Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann's radical transformations of the city in the 1840s. Rather than engendering a romantic nostalgia for a "lost" France, however, Meryon's views of urban life are ominous reflections of the increasingly depersonalized city. The expansive, panoramic view of Paris in Le Pont-au-Change is somewhat unusual for Meryon, whose cityscapes were generally more limited in scope. Just beyond the Pont-au-Change, one sees the tower of the Pompe Notre-Dame, and to the right, on the Ile de la Cite, are the Palais de Justice and the Tour de l'Horloge. In various states Meryon reworked the fantastic imagery that appears in the sky, each time altering the meaning of the print. The fifth state was the first published edition of the print. The balloon in the sky bears the word SPERANZA (Italian for "hope"), as if to comment on the man floundering in the river near a small boat, ignored by the boaters as they watch the balloon. In the seventh state Meryon penciled reclining females, a snake, and a chariot in the clouds, although these changes were never rendered on the copper plate. The next major revision of the print occurred in the tenth state, when Meryon added a crescent moon and a large flock of birds that circle the city in a predatory manner. It has been suggested that Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven may have inspired this alteration. The eleventh state underwent a dramatic change; the menacing birds were removed, and a series of small balloons were added, endowing the print with a more lighthearted, whimsical character. In 1854 Meryon wrote the poem "L'Esperance" to accompany the print and metaphorically parallel the image.

A number of Huber's drawings of specific places document trips up the Danube to Germany in 1513-14 and down the Danube to Vienna in 1529-31. Huber and Albrecht Altdorfer are the principal artists of the Danube school, a stylistic trend in German Renaissance art distinguished by its emphasis on landscape and the transcendent dynamism of nature. This rare drawing by an anonymous artist in the circle of Huber uses landscape to represent the presence of God in nature itself, rather than as a setting for a traditional religious narrative. As noted by Peter Halm and subsequent authors, this is one of several versions of a lost drawing by Huber. The spare, linear style of the present drawing, as well as the tendency to focus upon the vertical elements of the landscape, such as the trees and the distant church steeple, become evident when it is compared with the Goettingen version (see Winzinger 1979, vol. 2., pl. 181), which emphasizes the articulation of dense, curling vegetation. Talbot and Shestack propose that these drawings are based on a Huber model of around 1515-25; Winzinger believes this model would have been slightly later, however, adducing comparisons to drawings by Huber of around 1530. Huber's more naturalistic depiction of a road to a church in an earlier drawing in Dresden (Kupferstichkabinett; Winzinger 1979, no. 66, dated ca. 1518-20) here gives way to a visionary approach to the theme, conveyed most explicitly through the presence of the radiant sun (Sonnengestirn), a recurrent motif in the landscape imagery of the Danube school, expressing God's vital presence in nature. Such pantheism is clearly evident in the present drawing, in which the diminutive church appears to serve as an emblem of the divine energy coursing through the trees and furrowed hills that surround it. A similar juxtaposition of the radiant sun and a church steeple occurs in Albrecht Altdorfer's earlier engraving of Saint Christopher of around 1515-20 (Bartsch 19).

This watercolor bears a close resemblance to many of Nolde's studies of tug steamers in Hamburg harbor, a subject that preoccupied the artist throughout the year 1910. It is sparser and more summary than many of the Hamburg watercolors, however, and in this respect is closer to Nolde's harbor scenes painted in 1913-14, when he joined a German anthropological expedition whose destination was the Bismarck Archipelago in the South Pacific. During his six-week stay in China and Japan, the artist made numerous drawings of the people and their harbors. His fascination with Chinese junks resulted in several watercolor and charcoal studies of these vessels, with their distinctive sails. The boat on the extreme right in the Grunwald Center watercolor appears closely related to some of these studies, and the composition is typical of the harbor scenes painted during Nolde's yearlong journey. The significant elements of sky and water are indicated by broad washes of unusual colors, the boats are rapidly sketched in black, and much of the paper is left untouched by color. Upon the expedition's hurried return to Germany after the August 1914 declaration of war, Nolde's sketches, along with the rest of the baggage, were confiscated by the British at Suez, to be returned to him in 1921.

Formerly attributed to Ercole Bazicaluva (b. ca. 1610-active ca. 1661, Italian), this drawing was recently given to Cantagallina, who may have been originally excluded from consideration because the 1655 date on the drawing places it after that traditionally given for Cantagallina's death, 1635. Based on the evidence of two drawings, dated 1654 and 1655, attributed to him in the Uffizi, Cantagallina is now believed to have died in 1656, a date recorded by one of his original biographers.

Piranesi published numerous suites of prints, celebrating the grandeur of Rome in archaeologically precise views of existing monuments or in imaginary scenes combining real and invented elements. Among his most renowned publications are the Vedute di Roma (1748-78), the Carceri d'invenzione (first edition, 1749-60), and Le antichita romane (1756). Piranesi had numerous patrons among the papacy, clergy, and aristocrats of Rome and others throughout Europe, especially in England, and sets of his prints were frequently purchased by connoisseurs and collectors who visited Rome. Ponte Salario was part of the Vedute di Roma series, which featured 135 views of the main tourist sights of Rome and a few views outside of the city. The series, begun in 1748, occupied Piranesi until his death in 1778 and in many ways documents the evolution of his artistic career. In the first phase of the project, from 1748 to 1754, Piranesi issued prints exclusively of contemporary Rome and of well-known sights such as the great basilicas and piazzas. In the second phase (1754-60), however, he focused on individual monuments of ancient Rome. Ponte Salario is characteristic of the second phase of the series and takes as its subject the ancient Roman bridge that crossed the Aniene River near its confluence with the Tiber. In contrast to the smaller, more impressionistic portrayals of ancient monuments in Piranesi's Antichita romane de' tempi della repubblica series, the Ponte Salario is rendered on a large scale, with striking contrasts of light and shade that heighten the dramatic impact of the monument. To further enhance its grandeur, Piranesi rendered the bridge from an oblique angle, thereby showing the monument in its entirety.