June c. 1910

Roswell Morse Shurtleff made this watercolor of a forest, called 'June', sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It’s a wash of greens and blues, soft and kind of dreamy, like a memory. The way Shurtleff handles the paint is interesting; it’s very fluid, with thin layers building up to create depth. There are areas where the paper peeks through, giving it a luminous quality, and others where the pigment pools, creating these little pockets of intensity. Look at the way the light filters through the trees – it’s not about sharp details, but more about capturing the feeling of being in a forest, the cool air, the dappled light. It’s almost abstract in its approach. See how he uses these vertical marks to suggest the height of the trees, drawing your eye upwards, like standing in a cathedral of nature. You could compare Shurtleff to other tonalist painters like George Inness. Like Inness, he wasn’t trying to copy nature, but to translate the emotional experience of nature into paint. Art's not about answers, but about conversations, right?