#photomacrographs

The images illustrated here are photomacrographs (microscope images) of details in William Trost Richards’s 1873 watercolor, A High Tide at Atlantic City. Richards generally used an additive technique, laying down broad, overlapping washes of transparent color and then applying touches of opaque pigment to create textural contrasts. As you can see, there are subtle gradations of tone barely visible to the naked eye, particularly in the water and striated cloud forms.

See more of Richards' experiments in watercolor on view in our Luce Visible Storage though September 9.