1872
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Albano, Italy is a 1872 by George Inness, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet road winding through a small Italian village, trees framing the scene like a window. Inness made this while traveling in Italy, trading tight detail for loose, quick strokes. The bright blue paper glows through the watercolor, giving the whole thing a soft, dreamy light. It feels more like a memory than a postcard. If you like this, look up *sfumato*—a technique that blurs edges just like the hazy hills here.
This lyrical drawing on brilliant blue paper was done on a trip to Italy, where George Inness made a series of watercolor sketches of the Italian countryside in the vicinity of Albano. In contrast to the precision of his earlier Hudson River school paintings, in the early 1870s his work achieved a new freedom. This drawing is reminiscent of a classical Italian landscape, illustrating a broad expanse with a road winding through an Italian village, complete with framing trees in the foreground and ancient fortifications in the background. Inness made this drawing by applying wet washes one on…
Read the full account in the museum source.
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was an American landscape painter. Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced by the Hudson River School…
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