Upcoming

On Location: Drawing the Outdoors

Sep 18 – Jan 17, 2027

Harvard Art Museums
Museum

Harvard Art Museums

32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Tue–Sun 10am–5pm, Thu until 9pm

Admission

🎁

Free Admission

About

Discover how an intimate and reflective relationship with nature can shape artistic vision. Meander through visions of the outdoors to discover how landscapes offered 19th-century European artists freedom, renewal, and rediscovery beyond the pressures of society. Placing the natural world at the center of artistic expression and featuring drawings by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh, among many others, _On Location: Drawing the Outdoors_ includes approximately 140 sketches, watercolors, and pastels in a showcase of creativity devoted to and inspired by nature. Organized into 10 thematic sections, the exhibition unfolds like a series of trails through the landscape, tracing changing perceptions, the rise of environmentalism, and shifting national and artistic identities. Along the way, it introduces the techniques, formats, and functions of outdoor drawings and watercolors, showing how artists employed them to interpret the countryside and portray sites of natural beauty. _On Location: Drawing the Outdoors_ offers visitors a space to reflect on how the experiences and motivations of 19th-century artists still resonate today.

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