Boston-area art lovers have a beautiful reason to cross the Charles this fall. On Location: Drawing the Outdoors is now on view in the Special Exhibitions Gallery at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, running September 18, 2026 through January 17, 2027.
The exhibition brings together approximately 140 sketches, watercolors and pastels by 19th-century European artists who left the studio to work directly in nature. Among them are John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh — including van Gogh’s evocative The Blue Cart from 1888.
Organized into 10 thematic sections, the show unfolds like a series of trails through the landscape. Visitors follow changing perceptions of the countryside, the rise of environmental awareness, and shifting national and artistic identities, while learning about the techniques, formats and functions artists used outdoors to interpret fields, forests, coasts and sites of natural beauty.
More than a survey of pretty views, On Location offers a quiet space to reflect on freedom, renewal and rediscovery — the same feelings those artists sought beyond the pressures of society, and feelings that still resonate on a crisp New England autumn day. Gallery talks and exhibition tours led by curator Joachim Homann add extra ways to explore the works up close.
Make it a full cultural outing from Boston: stroll Harvard Yard, then slow down among drawings that celebrate looking closely at the natural world.
Photo: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum
