Watergarden

Water Garden depicts the gardens at the home of Marion Koogler McNay, whom artist Victor Higgins married in 1937. Higgins was less active in San Antonio than he had been in Taos, and the majority of his output focused on the manicured gardens of her estate, Sunset Hills. His marriage to McNay was short-lived, unfortunately, and the two divorced in 1940.

The structured character of the gardens lent itself to Higgins's angular approach, an influence from modernist John Marin. Higgins placed all the features at a diagonal in this watercolor to create a compositional energy suggestive of the natural energies he perceived in nature.