Paul H. Tilton (active about 1885 - 1895, Venice)
Venice, 1886
Oil on panel, 32 x 42 cm (12 5/8 x 16 9/16 in.)
This oil painting shows the outlines of Venice on the horizon, across an expanse of water. In the foreground to our right a weathered brick wall topped by a full length white statue of the Virgin under a metal dome juts up from the dark shadows of the water. The top of the wall has a low bush of yellow flowers behind the statue and a small lantern protruding from the wall at the level of the Virgin’s feet. On the wall’s side, a rectangle topped by a triangle suggests a widow or architectural ornamentation. Next to the wall a low, brown rowboat is docked, tied to a long, narrow pile. A gray-blue expanse covers much of the remainder of the painting. The bottom third represents the calm, water with sparse, gentle waves. The top two-thirds constitutes the sky with varying tones of gray-blue suggesting cumulus clouds and perhaps threatening rain clouds. In the center mid-ground a single sailboat with a triangular-shaped yellow and brown sail traverses the water, behind which the small triangular sails of a couple other sailboats can be glimpsed in the distance against the horizon, where we see a sliver of the gray outlines of the domes and towers of Venice.
Macknight Room
Commentary
Paul Henry Tilton’s seascape of Venice — depicting a statue of the Madonna and Child underneath a bronze canopy in the foreground, and in the background, the city through the haze of the sailboat-filled lagoon — caught Jack Gardner’s eye when he and his wife Isabella Stewart Gardner were visiting their favorite city in September of 1886.
Born into an artistic family as the son of the American landscape painter John Rollin Tilton (1828-1888) the New York Times listed Paul Tilton in a group of talented progeny of established artists in 1880. “There are some young artists in Rome, says the Parisian, who still call themselves students, but who give great promise, and their talent is hereditary… young Tilton is a painter, and the buying public has already found its way to his studio.” The Gardners visited the artist’s studio multiple times when they were in Venice.