The Mount Washington Range, from Mount Kearsarge 1872

William Trost Richards made this watercolor painting of The Mount Washington Range sometime in the late nineteenth century. At first glance, the scene is straightforward: a sublime vista rendered with careful gradations of tone. But watercolors are actually quite demanding. They require planning and control, as the artist coaxes the pigments to flow across the paper. You can see this intentionality in the way Richards layers the washes to create depth and atmosphere. During this period, advancements in paint production made art more accessible. Before pre-mixed colors in tubes, artists or their assistants had to grind and mix pigments themselves. With industrialization, artists could focus more on the creative act. Paintings like this, while seemingly a direct transcription of nature, also reflect the changing landscape of artistic labor in the industrial era. Richards invites us to consider not just what we see, but how it was made possible.