Description
For most of his distinguished career as an architect, Latrobe, the designer of the original U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., kept an illustrated journal of his travels throughout the country. The journal, along with most of his watercolor drawings, is now in the Maryland Historical Society. This drawing depicts the confluence of Elk and Pates’s Creeks in northern Maryland, then a point of commercial and passenger exchange on the journey from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. For the most part, the lip service that the artist pays here to picturesque composition, manifested principally in the calligraphic tree in the foreground, yields to the artist’s curiosity about the landscape’s utilitarian, agricultural, and commercial functions. Medium: watercolor, pen and iron gall ink, and graphite on off-white wove paper.
Image Licence
CC0 1.0
Image Credit
Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts
Location
Elk Forest, Elkton, Maryland, USA
Country
USA
Tags
Category
Landscapes & Seascapes
