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Care for a Roll in the Hay?

Summer grasses wane in this watercolor, a reminder that long days are numbered—for playful romps in the field and for hay fever sufferers!

This hazy Virginia field demonstrates the multiple talents of artist and scientist William Henry Holmes. The landscape provides details that seem particular, while its sense of color and timelessness is thoroughly artistic.

As a topographical illustrator, Holmes explored and documented Yellowstone on the 1872 U.S. Geological Survey under the command of Ferdinand Hayden. From 1897 until his death in 1932, Holmes worked as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian, where he kept detailed sketchbooks of cultural artifacts. At the same time, beginning in 1906, Holmes became a curator of art. From 1920 to 1932 he served as the first director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, then called the National Gallery of Art.

Source: Clifford M. Nelson, "William Henry Holmes: Beginning a Career in Art and Science," Records of the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, D.C., ed. Francis Coleman Rosenberger (Washington, D.C.: Columbia Historical Society, n.d.).

Pictured: William Henry Holmes, 1846–1933, Field of Varicolored Grasses in Late Summer (in the Virginia Hills), n.d., watercolor, 15 1/8 x 20 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Anna Bartsch Dunne.