Head-Piece to List of Drawings

Will Hicock Low · 1885/88

Medium

Gray, black and white gouache, with graphite, on tan card

Original size

12.3 × 36.2 cm (4 7/8 × 14 5/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

This delicate decorative vignette reveals Will Hicock Low at his most refined — a small-scale work of surprising elegance, rendered in the restrained palette of gray, black, and white gouache over a warm tan ground. Low trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran and Jean-Léon Gérôme in the 1870s, absorbing the French academic tradition before returning to America as one of its most accomplished decorative painters. His work sits at the intersection of fine art and applied illustration — he was equally at home designing murals for public buildings and producing intimate works like this one for print reproduction. The gouache technique here is characteristically precise, using the tan card itself as a mid-tone to give the composition warmth and depth without heaviness. Low enjoyed a long friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson, and several of his decorative works from this period were created in connection with illustrated editions of literature — the head-piece format situating this piece firmly within that world of finely crafted book art. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates Low's subtle tonal control and draughtsman's precision into a medium of greater permanence, honoring the quiet craftsmanship of the original while bringing it to life at a scale and richness the printed page could never achieve.