Artwork Details
- Title
- Near the Rialto, Venice
- Artist
- Date
- ca. 1923-1926
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- sheet: 13 × 8 5⁄8 in. (33.0 × 21.9 cm), irregular image: 9 1⁄2 × 7 3⁄8 in. (24.0 × 18.7 cm), irregular mount: 14 1⁄4 × 10 1⁄4 in. (36.2 × 26 cm), irregular
- Credit Line
- Transfer from the North Carolina Museum of Art (Gift of the artist, 1977)
- Mediums Description
- linoleum cut on paper
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Waterscape — canal
- Cityscape — Italy — Venice
- Architecture — bridge
- Object Number
- 2020.4.11
Artwork Description
By the twentieth century, Venice offered a vibrant tourist industry that was easy for American visitors to navigate, including single young women. Pugh worked in Venice in 1921 while touring Europe on a scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, filling her sketchbooks with records of the principal sights. She later converted these designs into linoleum block prints that led to commissions for book and magazine illustrations. These travel images cemented her reputation as an innovative printmaker and designer. In this view of the Rialto Bridge, Pugh includes a young female artist at work on the lower left, presumably inserting herself into the scene.
Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano, 2021.