Natural Bridge, Virginia

19th century

Unknown

Against a watery blue sky, an arched rock formation joins tall cliffs that together fill most of this vertical watercolor painting. The arch is to our left, next to a plant-covered, tall outcropping. The cliffs dominate the right half of the composition. Lit from the upper left, the rocky faces are light and caramel brown with fog-gray fissures and cracks. The tops of the cliffs are fringed with dark green shrubs and a few long vines hang down some of them. A slate-blue river, dotted with rocks, winds from the lower center of the picture around to our left, before disappearing behind tall boulders there. Near the lower right corner and tiny in scale, a man wearing light blue and tan garments stands on the river’s edge holding fishing pole over the water. Upon closer inspection, a series of small dots of color suggest people crossing the top of the arched bridge. Above them, a buff-white and pale blue sky fills the top third of the scene.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    watercolor and gouache over graphite on paperboard

  • Credit Line

    Corcoran Collection

  • Dimensions

    sheet: 35.24 × 27.62 cm (13 7/8 × 10 7/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    2015.19.736


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(The Old Print Shop, New York); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1950; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art

Associated Names

Inscriptions

upper right verso in graphite: Reua [not deciphered] ?

Wikidata ID

Q64633393


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