Corfu: The Terrace

In the autumn of 1909 Sargent spent about six weeks on Corfu, the Greek island in the Ionian Sea, staying at a villa called the Soteriotissa. With him were his sister Emily, her close friend Eliza Wedgwood, and two painter friends, Wilfrid and Jane de Glehn. He spent the days painting watercolours in the villa's garden and the olive groves around it, and this sheet comes from that stay.

The museum's description of the technique shows how it was built. Over a light pencil drawing he laid transparent washes, added a few touches of opaque colour, and in places drew first with wax. Wax repels water, so the paint ran off those strokes and left the white of the paper showing through.

In 1909 the Brooklyn Museum had bought 83 of his watercolours from a show at the Knoedler gallery in New York. When Sargent sent a second group to Knoedler in 1912, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston bought all of it, and this view of Corfu entered the collection in April that year.