Miner Kilbourne Kellogg, born Manlius - Scylla - 1866 - T-Shirt

This is a pencil study of a steep mountain rising above the cliffs and village of Scylla, drawn from the water by American painter Miner Kilbourne Kellogg.

Visual Elements & Composition

Pencil grey carries the entire drawing against a parchment cream ground. A steep mountainside fills the frame, its diagonal slope built from fine hatching and its crest broken by a ragged outline. At lower left, a cluster of low houses sits on a rocky shelf above the water, with a sheer pale cliff running along the mountain's base. A promontory topped by a building rises at right, and a dark line of trees follows the shore below. The sky is left almost blank, and the water is marked by a single horizontal stroke. A handwritten inscription at lower right names Scylla and gives a June date.

Meaning & Symbolism

The drawing renders the coast as a place of hazard, with bare rock and steep ground pressing down on the shore. In Homer's account, this rock was the home of a monster that seized sailors, and its danger was measured against the whirlpool Charybdis across the strait. The small houses at the mountain's foot carry the other half of the story: people who lived and worked beneath a formidable shore. Kellogg, who was born in Manlius, New York, travelled in Europe and the Near East in the 1840s and drew from direct observation, favouring outline and tonal shading over colour. This sheet records one of his studies of the same coast, and it reflects how American travellers of the period recorded the places they encountered.

Carried Across the Chest

A drawing this spare depends on open space, and the blank sky and single water stroke give the mountain room to dominate. On a tee, that composition sits in front of the viewer at close range, so the hatched slope and the houses on their rocky shelf are read at conversation distance rather than across a gallery wall. The steep ridge and the cluster of houses at its foot give the wearer a clear focal point, and the handwritten Scylla inscription keeps the sketch's sense of place intact.