Mexican Landscape

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

Francis McCarthy was a student and teacher at the Friends Neighborhood Guild, a North Philadelphia Quaker organization that held regular exhibitions of local artists. Albert Barnes often purchased works from these exhibitions, including this watercolor of a rural landscape, possibly sketched near Cuautla, Jalisco, a small town in western Mexico. While studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, McCarthy adopted what he called the "wet paper technique," which consisted of adding pigment to already wet paper to create shapes with soft edges, allowing colors to bleed into each other. These soft edges can be seen here in the blurred trees and hill.

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