Italian Landscape
Artist: Washington Allston (American, 1779-1843)
Date: 1814
Dimensions:
painting: 44 x 72 in. (11.8 x 183 cm);
framed: 51 x 79 1/2 x 3 1/4 in. (129.5 x 201.9 x 8.3 cm)
Medium: oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott
Object number: 1949.113
Label Text:As a young artist in 1801, Washington Allston studied at London’s Royal Academy under American painter Benjamin West (see paintings by West in this gallery and in Gallery 28A). He then lived for a time in Rome before returning to Boston in 1808. Allston painted Italian Landscape in England during a second stay in Europe (1811-1818) as a remembrance and reverie of his time in Rome. He created an ideal, rather than real, image of the Italian countryside set in an imaginary distant past, with classically garbed peasants contemplating a rustic fountain. The ruins of temples and towers create a romantic, picturesque mood, while hinting at the ultimate futility of human endeavor.
On view
In Collection(s)