Study for The Quest of the Holy Grail 1996

Edwin Austin Abbey made this watercolour painting, Study for The Quest of the Holy Grail, probably as a prep piece. The colour story here is, for me, what makes it. It’s all in this warm, stony palette, this gentle ochre, like it’s been baking in the sun. The paint is really thin, almost transparent in places, like he’s building up layers of light. You can see the pencil lines underneath, the bones of the drawing. It’s like he’s thinking aloud, figuring out the space and structure. Look at the columns on the left, how they fade in and out. The dark, blocky doorway over on the right is so confidently placed; I wonder what’s through there? This piece feels like a whisper, a starting point, which reminds me of how much goes into a painting before it becomes the finished, shiny ‘thing’. Like those architectural studies by Sol LeWitt, Abbey reminds us that art-making is also a process of discovery.