Fountain with Putti in the Garden of the Villa Borghese

1880·Black crayon over graphite, with opaque white watercolor and touches of red chalk, squared with graphite for transfer, on tan wove paper·46.6 × 34.6 cm (18 3/8 × 13 5/8 in.)

<p>Thoma was not only a painter and printmaker, but also a museum director. This large working drawing (a <em>modello</em>) was squared for transfer for a painting that has yet to be found and was independently prized for its delicacy and refined mood. The same year that Thoma drew this sheet it was selected for a special facsimile reproduction by a Berlin printer.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1880
Medium: Black crayon over graphite, with opaque white watercolor and touches of red chalk, squared with graphite for transfer, on tan wove paper
Dimensions: 46.6 × 34.6 cm (18 3/8 × 13 5/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Hans Thoma

Artist

Hans Thoma

Painting

Hans Thoma was a German-Badense painter known for intimate landscape and genre scenes that bridged Romantic sensibility with a precise naturalistic observation of light and atmosphere. Active from the 1860s through the early twentieth century, he worked primarily in oil and developed a distinctive approach to domestic interiors and rural subjects, often populated by solitary figures or small groups. His work remained rooted in a lyrical, accessible realism that resisted both academic convention and modernist abstraction.

Karlsruhe

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