John Singer Sargent’s Pool in the Garden of La Granja captures the luminous afternoon light that characterizes his finest Spanish and Italian watercolors. Spain held enduring fascination for Sargent—its people, landscapes, and traditions drawing him back repeatedly between 1879 and 1912. In the present watercolor, he turns his attention to a quiet corner of the pool surrounding the baroque Fountain of Andromeda at the Royal Palace of La Granja in San Ildefonso. Conceived in the 1720s as a summer retreat for the Spanish kings, the palace gardens were modeled on the grand formal layouts of seventeenth-century French design. Abundant mountain water from the nearby Sistema Central made possible an extraordinary complex of more than twenty monumental fountains, their subjects steeped in classical mythology. 

Rather than depicting the dramatic central sculpture of Andromeda’s heroic rescue, Sargent focuses on the sweeping garden setting and its woodland paths lined with marble figures, creating a rhythm of light, shadow, and architectural punctuation that he evokes with economy of brushwork. Sargent painted at least two other watercolors at the Gardens of La Granja, each exploring secluded corners animated by sculptural accents. 

The work also carries distinguished provenance. At the lower left, Sargent dedicates the sheet “to my friend Rathbone,” referring to William Gair Rathbone VII, a close confidant of the artist. It later descended to his daughter, Elena Rathbone, Lady Richmond.