Corinth

Lockwood de Forest · 1878

Medium

Oil on card

Original size

17.8 × 22.9 cm (7 1/16 × 9 1/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

Painted on location during Lockwood de Forest's travels through Greece, *Corinth* captures the luminous, sun-bleached quality of the ancient city with an intimacy that only a small-format oil study can achieve. De Forest was among a generation of American artists drawn to the Mediterranean and Near East in the 1870s, seeking light and subject matter far removed from the Hudson River tradition. Working on card rather than canvas, he painted with directness and economy — the format demanded quick decisions and rewarded confident brushwork over laboured finish. The result is something closer to a private record of a place than a formal composition, giving the viewer a sense of standing beside the artist in the afternoon heat. De Forest later became as celebrated for decorative arts and design as for his painting, co-founding a studio with Louis Comfort Tiffany — but works like *Corinth* reveal the observational rigour that underpinned everything he made. Now held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the original remains a quiet testament to a particular moment of American artistic wandering. Our hand-painted oil reproduction honours the spontaneous, on-the-spot character of de Forest's original, preserving its warmth, tonal subtlety, and sense of place in every brushstroke.