Olive Trees, Corfu

John Singer Sargent's Olive Trees, Corfu (1909) is a watercolor and opaque watercolor with scraping and wax resist over graphite on ivory wove paper. This watercolor was painted on the Greek island of Corfu, which Sargent visited in 1909. The ancient olive trees of Corfu, with their gnarled trunks and silver-green foliage, provided a subject perfectly suited to Sargent's watercolor technique. The composition shows the olive trees in the landscape of the island, their distinctive forms rendered with a combination of precise observation and expressive freedom. The wax resist technique creates areas where the watercolor beads and slides, suggesting the texture of the olive leaves and the shimmer of the Mediterranean light. The opaque watercolor adds weight and solidity. The scraping creates highlights. Sargent's Corfu watercolors are among the most beautiful of his career, capturing the unique light and landscape of the Greek island with extraordinary freshness and brilliance.

Sargent's Corfu watercolors are among the most beautiful works of his later career, capturing the unique light and landscape of the Greek island with extraordinary freshness.

This watercolor of olive trees on Corfu captures the ancient beauty of the Greek landscape, Sargent's experimental technique and luminous palette creating a vision of Mediterranean splendor.