Virgin 

Gustav Adolf Mossa created this watercolor and gouache painting, Virgin, using traditional materials. Watercolor can often give paintings a dreamy, ethereal feeling due to the translucent properties of the medium, and gouache’s opacity allows for layering and correction. Mossa has used both of these to full advantage here. The pale, muted colors, applied in thin washes, create an otherworldly scene, where a figure stands before a mountain that takes the form of a woman. The mountain is rendered in cool blues and greens, evoking a sense of distance, and the white of the paper shows through, adding to the feeling of lightness. The artist’s layering of the gouache creates subtle gradations of light and shadow, giving depth to the mountain. Through these careful techniques, Mossa constructs a mysterious and symbolic image, referencing the Romantic tradition of landscape painting. The work is imbued with a sense of longing, and it draws on a tradition of symbolism that values atmosphere over the precise depiction of form.