George Elbert Burr, born Monroe Falls, - (Sketchbook) Vevey La Tour - 1899 - T-Shirt

A graphite pencil sketch of a lakeside tower rising among poplars, drawn on the right-hand page of an open sketchbook in 1899.

Visual Elements & Composition

The drawing is built in soft pencil grey on an off-white page, with the blank left leaf of the sketchbook framing the view. A tall tower with a small pointed roof stands on the left among slender poplars, while low trees and a cluster of small buildings line the shore. A gently curving bank carries the eye across the foreground to the water, where a small rowing boat sits on the still surface. On the right, a steep mountain slope is shaded with diagonal hatching, giving the scene weight. A handwritten inscription in the lower left reads Vevey La Tour with the date 1899.

Meaning & Symbolism

The sketch sets architecture, vegetation, water and mountain in a clear sequence from land to lake. The vertical tower and poplars answer the long horizontal of the water, so the picture reads as calm and ordered. The title places the view at Vevey on the shore of Lake Geneva, where a settled town sits at the foot of a dramatic landscape. George Elbert Burr, an American artist known for drawings, etchings and paintings of landscape and architecture, made this study on the spot as a traveller, recording form, light and proportion directly from the scene. It is one of a sequence of views from the same journey.

Looking Closely at This Tee

Pencil studies like this one are drawn to be looked at up close, and the fine hatching and tower outline reward a closer view. The lakeside scene sits across the chest as a single, unbroken view, the way the artist kept the sketch to one clear frame. Wearing it puts the quiet shoreline, the poplars and the shaded mountain in the same calm, observational mood Burr captured in 1899.