Venice, Looking Out over the Lagoon

About 1900, Morrice became interested in James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s ideas on the relationship between painting and music, establishing an analogy between the key that gives a piece of music its particular character and the colouring of a painting that awakens a range of emotions. Here, paying careful attention to the effects of light, Morrice creates an atmosphere in which the arrangement of areas of colour is more important than narrative. The summarily drawn figures become accessories to the space occupied by the sky and the canal, both bathed in pink.