Andalusia, Spain

Muirhead Bone traveled to Andalusia in 1925, producing a series of watercolors that captured the region's distinctive architecture and landscape with his characteristic precision and atmospheric sensitivity. Andalusia's white villages, dramatic hilltop settings, and intense Mediterranean light presented Bone with a subject that challenged his Northern European sensibility. The result was a series of watercolors that combined his architectural draftsmanship with a new warmth of color and looseness of handling that the Spanish subject demanded.

Bone's Spanish watercolors represent an important phase in his development. The Mediterranean light forced him to lighten his palette and loosen his brushwork, producing watercolors that are more atmospheric and less linear than his celebrated etchings and drypoints of London and Glasgow. The Andalusia watercolors influenced a generation of British watercolorists who followed Bone south, adding Spanish subjects to the Italian and French destinations that had dominated British watercolor tourism.

Andalusia, Spain is Bone outside his comfort zone and the better for it. The Mediterranean light loosened his technique and warmed his palette, producing watercolors that combine Northern precision with Southern atmosphere in a way that expanded the expressive range of British architectural watercolor.