Facsimiles of Sketches Made in Flanders and Germany: On the Walls, Cologne

Discussion

FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

Prout was a landscape watercolorist, printmaker, and well-known teacher. Prout drew freely on the stone with a firm but crumbling line, ideally suited to the quaint, eroded architecture he loved to portray. Tone was obtained by printing on pale gray paper and then adding highlights by hand with white gouache. Topographical prints had been popular in England since the late 1900s and they increased awareness of the beauty of the British landscape. Such prints, as well as the writing of Jean Jacques Rousseau, inspired a love of nature. When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1814, peaceful conditions enabled people to travel, leading to the production of lithographic scenes from Europe. These were most often published in sets, sometimes with accompanying text, through which patrons could vicariously satisfy their wanderlust.

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