Venice

A disciple of English artist and theorist John Ruskin and his ‘truth to nature’ approach embraced by the American Pre-Raphaelites, Newman is best known for his highly detailed, large-scale outdoor scenes of flowers as well as locales in Japan and Egypt, painted in painstaking watercolor. This rare oil on panel dates from his first visit to Venice, following a residency in Florence. Its unusual horizontal format and fluid paint handling distinguish it from Newman’s later scenes of Venice—mostly executed in watercolor in a vertical format. The work reveals the artist’s initial fascination with the city’s distinctive patterns of sea and sky, soon to be replaced by an emphasis on architectural subjects. This Venetian panel may have been among the works hanging in Newman’s Florence studio on a visit from American journalist Anne Brewster, who lyrically described his Favorite subjects as “clusters of Venetian market boats, the ‘butterfly boats’ of Ruskin, whose sails look as if they were handfuls of brilliant poppy and buttercup petals scattered on the water.”