Rendering Water

Francesco Marcolini (printer)
Pietro Aretino and the Siren
ca. 1540-50
chiaroscuro woodcut (key-block only)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Paolo de' Matteis
Perseus and Andromeda
ca. 1690-1700
oil on canvas
Fairfield University Art Museum, Connecticut

Joseph Nickolls
The Thames at the Tower of London
ca. 1750-55
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Romolo Achille Liverani
Design for Wall Decoration, Casa Taviotti, Faenza
1831
ink and watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Max Liebermann
Swimmers
ca. 1875-77
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Claude Monet
Valley of the Creuse at Sunset
1889
oil on canvas
Musée Unterlinden, Colmar

Henry Moret
Paysage de Doëlan à la voile blanche
1898
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest

James Wilson Morrice
Palazzo Ferro Fini, Grand Canal, Venice
ca. 1900-1905
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Franz Marc
Bathers
1910
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Henri Martin
Bridge at Labastide du Vert
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Musée Henri Martin, Cahors

Elizabeth Olds
Fire
1940
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Helen Levitt
Bronx NY
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Bill Owens
Los Angeles Documentary Project: Pool
1980
C-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Props, Costumes and Designs from Il Corso del Coltello
1986
offset lithograph (poster) after Oldenburg watercolor
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

John Pfahl
Ozone Falls, Cumberland Plateau, TN
1991
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Irving Marcus
Tsunami
2003
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Maya Lin
Caspian Sea
2006
plywood
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

from A Cold Spring

Beneath the light, against your white front door,
the smallest moths, like Chinese fans,

flatten themselves, silver and silver gilt
over pale yellow, orange, or gray.

Now, from the thick grass, the fireflies

begin to rise:

up, then down, then up again:

lit on the ascending flight,

drifting, simultaneously to the same height,

– exactly like the bubbles in champagne.

– Later on they rise much higher.

And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer
these particular glowing tributes
every evening now throughout the summer.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1955)

Aquatic - I

Carl Kuntz
Falls of the Rhine near Schaffhausen
1793
watercolor and gouache on paper
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Fireworks over the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen
ca. 1890
postcard
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Fireworks over the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen
ca. 1910
postcard
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

John Mix Stanley
Palouse Falls
1860
lithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Gustave Courbet
Falls of the Doubs
ca. 1855-60
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
Waterfalls at Tivoli
1744
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Lovis Corinth
Walchensee with the Slope of the Jochberg
1924
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum Hannover

Charles Cushman
Ocean Beach from Sutro Heights, San Francisco
1952
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Félix Vallotton
Evening View of Trouville
1910
oil on canvas
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Frits Thaulow
Behind the Mills, Montreuil-sur-Mer
1892
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Per Christian Brown
Tiergarten
2014
C-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Marinus Pieter Reus
Bridge over a Ditch
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Kalle Berggren
Bathing Platform
1976
gouache on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Karl Theodor Reiffenstein
Wooden Sluice
1860
watercolor on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Christian Rohlfs
The Sternbrücke, Weimar
1887
oil on canvas
Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany

Johan Rohde
Evening by the Karup
1889
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

For the Grecians in old time, and such barbarians as in the continent lived near unto the sea or else inhabited the islands after once they began to cross over one to another in ships, became thieves and went abroad under the conduct of their most puissant men, both to enrich themselves and to fetch in maintenance for the weak, and falling upon towns unfortified and scatteringly inhabited, rifled them and made this the best means of their living, being a matter at that time nowhere in disgrace but rather carrying with it something of glory.  This is manifest by some that dwell on the continent, amongst whom, so it be performed nobly, it is still esteemed as an ornament.  The same also is proved by some of the ancient poets, who introduce men questioning of such as sail by, on all coasts alike, whether they be thieves or not, as a thing neither scorned by such as were asked nor upbraided by those that were desirous to know.  They also robbed one another within the mainland.  And much of Greece useth that old custom, as the Locrians called Ozolae, the Acarnanians, and those of the continent in that quarter, unto this day.  Moreover, the fashion of wearing iron remaineth yet with the people of that continent from their old trade of thieving. 

For once they were wont throughout all Greece to go armed because their houses were unfenced and travelling was unsafe, and accustomed themselves, like the barbarians, to the ordinary wearing of their armour.  And the nations of Greece that live so yet, do testify that the same manner of life was anciently universal to all the rest.  Amongst whom the Athenians were the first that laid by their armour and growing civil, passed into a more tender kind of life.  And such of the rich as were anything stepped into years laid away upon the same delicacy, not long after, the fashion of wearing linen coats and golden grasshoppers, which they were wont to bind up in the locks of their hair.  

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Built

Sylvia Hahn
Model of the Athenian Acropolis in the 5th century BC
1956
plaster, paper, paint
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Todd Hido
#5437
2006
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Antonio Galli-Bibiena
Entrance Façade of a Palace
before 1774
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Franz Hanfstängl
Round Tower, Viktualienmarkt, Munich
1855
albumen print
Stadtmuseum, Munich

Anonymous Italian Painter after Francesco Guardi
Fair in Piazza San Marco, Venice
19th century
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Francesco Guardi
View through Arcade, Venice
before 1793
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Masons
Palace Portal from Cremona
ca. 1475-1500
marble
(purchased and removed to Paris in 1875)
Musée du Louvre

Walter Hege
Parthenon Treasury
ca. 1928-29
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Felice Giani
Temporary Triumphal Arch erected on Ponte Sant'Angelo for Napoleonic Ceremony
1798
oil on canvas
Museo di Roma a Palazzo Braschi

Roger Fry
Le Pont de Saint Goustan, Auray
ca. 1920-30
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Francis Frith
Pyramid at Dahshûr
ca. 1857
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

André Giroux
Santa Trinità dei Monti in the Snow, Rome
ca. 1825-30
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Richard Hough
Bus Queue, Edinburgh
ca. 1975
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Claude Lorrain
Tomb of Cecilia Metella outside Rome
1669
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin
1995
inkjet print mounted on aluminum
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Angelo Inganni
Teatro alla Scala
ca. 1852
oil on canvas
Museo del Teatro alla Scala, Milan

Walter Gropius
Flatiron Building, New York
1928
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

from On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey

Mortality behold, and fear,

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within this heap of stones,

Hence removed from beds of ease,

Dainty fare, and what might please,

Fretted roofs, and costly shows,

To a roof that flats the nose:

Which proclaims all flesh is grass;

How the world's fair glories pass;

That there is no trust in health,

In youth, in age, in greatness, wealth;

For if such could have reprieved

Those had been immortal lived.

Know from this the world's a snare,

How that greatness is but care,

How all pleasures are but pain,

And how short they do remain . . .

– attributed to Francis Beaumont (before 1616)