This handsome, bucolic view is one of the largest Alston watercolors we have seen from the 1940s. Charles Alston and his friend Hale Woodruff did many landscape studies and sketches during an exploratory trip to California in 1948. Both artists were preparing for the pair of large historical murals they would complete the following year for Los Angeles' Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company. However, unlike most watercolors from this period, this landscape is a complex composition with a great balance of detail and contrast.
