It Was the Custom Then to Bring Away the Bride From Home

Will Hicock Low · 1885

Medium

Black, gray and white gouache on cream wood-pulp laminate board

Original size

22.2 × 32.7 cm (8 3/4 × 12 7/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

A tender scene rendered in tonal restraint, this 1885 gouache captures the quiet ceremony of departure that marked traditional wedding rites, its muted palette lending the moment a timeless, almost mythological gravity. Will Hicock Low was among the most accomplished American painters of his generation to train in Paris, studying under Carolus-Duran alongside John Singer Sargent. His work sits at the intersection of French academic elegance and American Gilded Age romanticism, and his mastery of gouache — building luminosity through layered grays and controlled whites — gives this piece a sculptural quality that oil alone rarely achieves. The cream board beneath acts almost like warm candlelight, bleeding through the composition. Low was a close and lifelong friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, a relationship well-documented through their extensive correspondence, and the literary, narrative quality of works like this one reflects a sensibility shaped as much by storytelling as by pure technique. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates Low's deliberate tonal architecture into the richer medium of oil on canvas, preserving the mood and compositional tension of the original while bringing a warmth and depth that suits it well on a wall.