John Warwick Smith

John “Warwick” Smith visited the Tivoli region in the late 1770s on a sketching trip with Francis Towne (whose work appears to the right in this gallery). Tivoli was one of the two primary excursions taken by British artists and tourists from Rome. It offered not only an entrée to the idyllic Italian countryside, but also access to the ruins of ancient pleasure palaces, namely the Villa of Maecenas (1st century BCE) and Hadrian’s Villa (2nd century CE). Smith’s composition is experimental, forgoing a classical sense of proportion to instead highlight a prominent foreground tree. His technique combines pen outlines with occasional washes of pure color, while retaining a limited palette of rose and tan.