Landscape with Mountains of Samaria, 1904 (from Sketchbook) 1904

Mary Newbold Sargent made this watercolor landscape in 1904, pulling the Mountains of Samaria into view with washes of grey. Watercolor is just pigment and water, so it's perfect for capturing fleeting impressions, those wisps of thoughts we try to hold onto. Look at the way she's layered the washes, building up the landscape. The paper peeks through in places, giving it a luminous quality, like the light on a hazy day. Notice the dark, bold tree on the left. It anchors the composition, but it's also just a series of quick, confident strokes. It's all process, really. And the mountains in the background? They're barely there, just suggestions, like memories fading into the distance. Sargent’s contemporary, Whistler, used a similar tonal approach to distill landscape, and you can see a through line in the work of later painters such as Agnes Martin. It's like they're all having a conversation across time. Art is an ongoing conversation.