TitleRoad to Urbino
Artist
William Thon
(1906 - 2000)
Daten.d.
MediumWatercolor, tempera, pen and ink, wash and oil [?]
DimensionsSheet size: 20 1/2 × 27 1/16 in.
Mat size: 24 × 30 in.
SignedSigned lower right corner in black ink: "Thon"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number66-W
Label TextThon frequently visited Italy in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1959 he spent time there gathering material for a forthcoming exhibition at Midtown Galleries in New York City. Back in the city this material aided him in arranging “architectural elements into what I would consider a pleasing composition [while still managing] to hang onto the personality of a region.”Over the course of his career Thon developed a highly original approach to watercolor painting. He experimented with watercolor pigments, and added various salts and other chemicals in order to disperse the pigment over the paper, and create floating areas of color. He would rework his watercolors many times using large quantities of water, and create textural effects by sponging and scraping through layers of watercolor as well as india ink.
The art critic Emily Genauer believed that “No one can more poetically and imaginatively than he capture in the [watercolor] medium (but with surprising richness of texture) the golden quality of Italian afternoons, the special grayness of ancient olive trees garlanded with grape vines, the urgency of Spring rolling out over the broad fields . . . .”
