Tivoli

After attending Harvard University, Haseltine studied art at the academy in Düsseldorf. In 1857, he traveled to Italy with American painters Emanuel Leutze, Albert Bierstadt, and Worthington Whittredge. From Rome, they made frequent painting excursions into the nearby countryside. Since the seventeenth century, the town of Tivoli, about nineteen miles northeast of Rome, had been a popular destination for painters who were lured there by its antiquities, Renaissance villas, and pristine landscape. In this ink and graphite drawing, Haseltine focuses on the effect of light filtering through the trees, subtly heightening the otherwise monochromatic composition with white and pale-green tones. Haseltine returned to the United States in 1858 and built a successful career as a landscape painter before settling in Rome for the rest of his life in 1869.