#williamtrostrichards

Rocks on the Shore, William Trost Richards, c. 1880-1890, Harvard Art Museums: Drawings

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Presented by the National Academy of Design from the Mrs. William T. Brewster Bequest Size: 30.2 x 60.6 cm (11 7/8 x 23 7/8 in.) Medium: Watercolor and graphite on heavy cream wove paper

Lake Winnipesaukee, William Trost Richards, 1874, Brooklyn Museum: American Art

Size: 8 7/8 x 13 1/2 in. (22.5 x 34.3 cm) Medium: Watercolor on paper

Indian Summer, William Trost Richards, 1875, American Paintings and Sculpture

Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900 Size: 24 1/8 x 20 in. (61.3 x 50.8 cm) Medium: Oil on canvas

Study of violet leaves and grass, William Trost Richards, August 23, 1859, Smithsonian: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Medium: Graphite, brush and gouache on paper

Quiet Seascape, William Trost Richards, 1883, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Paintings

Landscape. Marine. William Trost Richards was intensely interested in waves. To study them, he waded into the water or spent hours at a time observing them from the beach. The result was maritime paintings of startling, almost photographic, realism. Richards, who was born in Philadelphia, spent his summers in Rhode Island and later traveled through Great Britain, France, and Norway seeking dramatic coastlines. This seascape may show a beach on the island of Jersey, in the English Channel. This painting once belonged to James J. Hill (1838-1916), the Minnesota railroad magnate whose collection of European paintings forms the basis of the Institute's nineteenth-century holdings. Size: 20 1/8 x 40 in. (51.12 x 101.6 cm) (canvas) 30 1/2 x 50 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (77.47 x 128.27 x 11.43 cm) (outer frame) Medium: Oil on canvas

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.

New Jersey Beach by William Trost Richards, American Paintings and Sculpture

Medium: Oil on canvas

Gift of Mrs. William T. Brewster, 1932 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Sketchbook of New England and Pennsylvania Landscape and Marine Subjects, William Trost Richards, 1886, American Paintings and Sculpture

Purchase, Gifts in memory of Stephen D. Rubin, 1992 Size: Cover: 5 x 7 1/2 in. (12.7 x 19.1 cm) Sheets: 4 15/16 x 7 3/8 in. (12.5 x 18.7 cm) Medium: Drawings in graphite on off-white wove paper, bound in marbled brown cardboard