Image: Vincent van Gogh, "The Blue Cart", 1888. Graphite, black chalk, oil pastel(?), brown ink, and transparent and opaque watercolor on tan laid paper. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.279. © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Art Museums will present ‘On Location: Drawing the Outdoors,’ an exhibition of approximately 140 drawings, watercolors, and pastels by 19th-century European artists who turned to the natural world for inspiration, renewal, and artistic exploration. The exhibition will be on view in the museum’s Special Exhibitions Gallery in Cambridge from September 18, 2026, through January 17, 2027.
The exhibition features works by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh, among others. It focuses on the ways artists moved beyond the studio to work outdoors, recording landscapes encountered on walks, travels, and excursions. The presentation considers how these artists used drawings and watercolors to respond to sites of natural beauty and to develop their own visual approaches to the countryside.
Organized into 10 thematic sections, ‘On Location’ examines changing perceptions of nature alongside the techniques, formats, and practical functions of outdoor drawing. The exhibition addresses the logistical challenges of working outside, the personal ambitions connected with landscape practice, and the expectations of contemporary audiences. Its themes also include the rise of environmentalism and shifting national and artistic identities.
Among the works highlighted by the museum is Vincent van Gogh’s ‘The Blue Cart’ (1888), a drawing made with graphite, black chalk, oil pastel, brown ink, watercolor, and gouache on tan laid paper. The work comes from the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum collection, where it entered through the bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop. The exhibition’s broader selection brings together sketches and finished works to show how artists interpreted the countryside and translated direct observation into images.
Joachim Homann, the Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings, curated the exhibition with Meghan Grady, Curatorial Assistant for Special Exhibitions and Publications in the Division of European and American Art, and Susanne Bartels, Stanley H. Durwood Foundation Curatorial Fellow from 2024 to 2026. Contributors include Penley Knipe, Philip and Lynn Straus Senior Conservator of Works of Art on Paper and Head of the Paper Lab; Miriam Stewart, Curator of the Collection in the Division of European and American Art; and current and former students in Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture.
The museum has scheduled related programming around the opening. A free opening program on September 17, from 6 to 7:15 p.m., will bring exhibition curators together to discuss outdoor working methods, technical processes, logistical difficulties, artistic ambitions, and audience expectations. On September 19, a gallery talk will consider representations of rural labor and urban leisure, while a Materials Lab workshop will explore perspective frames and camera lucidas. Led by Meghan Grady and Harvard physics professor Aravinthan Samuel, the workshop will combine a gallery visit with hands-on experiments and a plein air landscape-drawing session.
An accompanying catalogue expands on the exhibition through five essays and 10 thematic introductions by contributors with different areas of expertise. Funding for the exhibition and related programming was provided by several Harvard Art Museums funds, including the Stanley H. Durwood Foundation Support Fund for the Study of Dutch Drawing, with additional project support from the Almathea Charitable Foundation. ‘On Location: Drawing the Outdoors’ remains on view through January 17, 2027.
