Into the Green Recessed Woods They Flew

Will Hicock Low · 1885

Medium

Brown and white gouache, with touches of black gouache, on cream wood-pulp laminate board

Original size

42.9 × 35.4 cm (16 15/16 × 13 15/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

"Into the Green Recessed Woods They Flew" carries the hushed, dream-like quality of a mythological reverie — its pale figures dissolving into shadow, its tones so restrained they feel closer to a memory than a scene. Will Hicock Low trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran during the 1870s, absorbing the French academic tradition before returning to America as one of the defining figures of the American Renaissance. Equally at home with large-scale decorative murals and intimate works like this one, he brought the same classical sensibility to every scale. His gouache pieces on board — including this one, worked in brown and white with touches of black on a warm cream ground — reveal a painter who understood that tonal restraint can carry more emotional weight than a full palette. Low was a close and lifelong friend of Robert Louis Stevenson; the two men corresponded for years and Low illustrated several of Stevenson's published writings, a collaboration that spoke to their shared love of myth, romance, and poetic imagery. Our hand-painted oil reproduction honours Low's careful tonal layering and atmospheric delicacy, translating the quiet enchantment of the original into the warmth and permanence of oil on canvas.