Old Tower at Avignon

Samuel Colman · c. 1875

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

20.3 × 23.7 cm (8 × 9 5/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

Old Tower at Avignon distills the quiet grandeur of southern France into weathered stone and golden afternoon light, the kind of scene that feels both ancient and immediate. Samuel Colman was one of the most travelled American painters of his generation — a founding member of the American Watercolor Society and a key figure adjacent to the Hudson River School, though his restless eye drew him far beyond the American landscape. His European and Mediterranean journeys in the 1860s and 1870s produced work distinguished by its sensitivity to atmosphere and architecture, rendering sunlit masonry with a warmth that photographs of the era could never approach. In this canvas, Colman brings that same attentiveness to Avignon's layered history, where Roman, medieval, and Renaissance structures jostle for presence along the Rhône. Colman was notably influenced by the Barbizon painters during his time in France, and that sensibility — intimate, unhurried, rooted in close observation — is legible throughout his European work. This hand-painted oil reproduction is produced on canvas using traditional pigments and brushwork, preserving the tonal depth and textural richness that make the original, held in the Art Institute of Chicago, so enduring — a painting you can read slowly, finding new detail each time.