Harold Burr Painting

George Elbert Burr was an American printmaker and painter best known for his etchings and drypoints of the desert and mountain regions of the American West. He enjoyed success early, providing illustrations for Harper's, Scribner's Magazine, Frank Leslie's Weekly, and The Cosmopolitan. In 1892, he began a four-year project illustrating a catalog of Heber R. Bishop's collection of jade antiquities for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This project, producing etchings of over a thousand artifacts, paid well enough for Burr to embark on an extended tour of Europe upon its completion with his wife. Over the next five years, as they traveled in Italy, Germany, and the British Isles, Burr amassed sketches and watercolors that would provide the source material for his copper plate etchings of European scenes. In 1924, the Burrs settled in Phoenix, Arizona, where he would remain for the rest of his life. The change of scenery allowed him to round out his oeuvre of Western landscapes with expansive views of the Sonoran and Mojave deserts. He and his wife, who died in 1941, are buried in Cameron. Today, George Elbert Burr is widely considered to be one of the finest of the early 20th-century American etchers. His prints are in several prominent collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the British Museum, the French National Print Collection, Luxembourg Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Northern Arizona and the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C.

Landscape drawings and watercolors show the world through the lenses of different cultures and perspectives. They were also incredibly important for displaying natural scenes before the invention of photography.

There are many ways to effectively arrange art on your walls so that you’re maximizing your wall space. You can introduce peace and serenity within the confines of a living room or bedroom if landscape drawings and watercolors are part of the art that you choose to bring into a space.

Watercolor landscapes have a rich history dating back to ancient China, where they dominated painting genres by the late Tang dynasty. Ink-on-silk paintings in China featured mountains and large bodies of water as far back as the third century. The Netherlands was home to landscapes as a major theme in painting as early as the 1500s, and by the Renaissance, watercolors had made their way to the West and into European culture, becoming a staple of decorative art.

It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that watercolor paints became more widely available and embedded in fine arts. Despite their broad distribution today, some artists have chosen to revive the old craft of preparing their own watercolor pigments, paying homage to the medium’s roots.

The variety of brush combinations and painting methods makes watercolor landscapes some of the most stunning pieces in any collection. Find landscape drawings and watercolors on 1stDibs.