Towers and Gardens
Medium
etching
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Addie Burr Clark
Accession Number
1946.9.131
Art Historical Context
**Towers and Gardens** is a delicate etching created in 1922 by Donald MacLaughlan, a masterful Canadian-American printmaker renowned for his atmospheric landscapes and architectural vignettes. Working in the tradition of the etching revival popularized by James McNeill Whistler, MacLaughlan captured the interplay of light and shadow with exquisite precision, often drawing from European scenes during his time in Paris and Italy. This print, housed in the National Gallery of Art's Department of Modern Prints (CG-W), evokes a serene harmony between towering structures and lush gardens, inviting ...
About the Artist
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan (1876–1938) was born on November 9 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, though he is recognized as an American artist after his family relocated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1890. There, as a teenager, he immersed himself in the Boston Public Library's collections of old master prints, studying works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and eighteenth-century E...