Grapes and Olives

Grapes and Olives displays a compositional formula that Henry Roderick Newman preferred—one that features a foreground dominated by objects in “close-up” (here, the grapes and olives) and that offers a sweeping, long-distance view (the Gulf of Spezia in Italy). Newman’s miniaturist application of watercolor paint on such a large format suggests that he sought not only to justify watercolor as an important medium, but to perpetuate Ruskinian notions linking the creation of art with moral righteousness, as expressed in the painstaking labor of the painter.