Huis naast een brug over een rivier te Orbe 1782

Heinrich Rieter made this watercolor and pen and ink drawing of a house beside a bridge over the river Orbe in Switzerland sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century. Rieter took advantage of the smooth absorbent qualities of the paper to create soft gradations of tone, especially noticeable in the rendering of the water and sky. See how the artist was able to create depth with thin washes of color, using the pen and ink for the crisp architectural details? The choice of materials, and the emphasis on picturesque landscape, places this work in a longer tradition of topographic art, commissioned by wealthy patrons who wanted accurate, but also aesthetically pleasing, records of places. The cost of producing such images meant that they would have been inaccessible to ordinary people, reflecting social and economic divisions of the time. However, by focusing on the landscape, Rieter also elevates the natural world above these social concerns.