One of the Figures at the Parterre d'Eau

Carroll Beckwith painted this work on one of his two trips to Versailles, France, where he created about twenty-two paintings of garden statues. This painting was an outdoor study, which allowed Beckwith to focus on the colorful effects of light on the sculpture and the landscape. The greenish tint of the statue may also be the result of its deterioration. When Beckwith was in France, the government had recognized the dilapidation of the once glorious palace, and was moving to restore Versailles to its original splendor. (Franchi and Weber, Intimate Revelations: The Art of Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917), 1999)