Students' Journals: Travels Near & Far

Volunteer Park Sketches by Sally Yeager

Today I'm sharing some of the work being done this quarter in my Watercolor Travel Journal class. Students are working with subject matter from far and near. To the left are Sally Yeager's  sketchbook pages done in pen and watercolor from Volunteer Park in Seattle. And work that follows is from locations far afield. Every time I go to New York to visit family I check to see if the Pierpont Morgan Library is exhibiting some of its extensive collection of drawings. Many of them are British watercolors, some done in the great age of travel from 1750 to 1850.  The Grand Tour was very popular in the 18th century, not just with British travelers, but with other Continental travelers as well--see my previous post on Goethe at Lake Garda. Early in this age, British artists created topographic drawings of specific sites for their aristocratic patrons (locations including Rome and classical ruins there and around Italy.)  Later artists began to see the beauty of the landscapes around the British Isles, of ruined abbeys and other Romantic sites closer to home. Many artists found inspiration in both local and exotic travel. Turner went to Venice and Switzerland several times during his life, but painted in London and in the British and Welsh countryside while he was at home. In the spirit of these earlier painters, this coming spring quarter I am teaching a class on painting landscapes around Seattle and Puget Sound. I think it's really valuable to learn to appreciate one's own backyard, as well as more distant destinations.

Bhutan sketchbook by Peggy Printz

To the right are Peggy Printz's sketches from Bhutan.

Here are a few books I've bought at the Morgan that feature works on paper, many of them travel sketches and watercolors:

Sketching at Home and Abroad: British Landscape Drawings, 1750-1850 (The Morgan Library)

Tales and Travels, by Kathleen Stuart (The Morgan Library)

The Thaw Collection of Master Drawings (The Morgan Library)

Related articles

Claire Russell's Travel Journals

Travel Journal: A Geography of Color

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