A View of Civitella from the Serpentara next to Olevano, graphite on paper, roughly 9 x 12 inches (23 x 30 cm), in the collection of the Getty Museum, additional zoomable image on Google Art Project, downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons.
This drawing by German painter Heinrich Reinhold, who was active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, gives us a wonderful view of a landscape in Tuscany. I think it demonstrates how effectively graphite can be used to convey the textures and atmospheric effects of a grand landscape.
Look at how subtle but effective the difference in value is between the distant mountain and the foreground rocks and trees. I also admire the way the directional hatching blends into areas of tone, but retains the visual charm of the pencil marks, in much the same was as “painterly” brush strokes can in a printing.
