Tower of the Cathedral at Sens

John Ruskin

National Gallery of Art

Two buildings nearly meet on either side of a more distant white cathedral tower in this loosely rendered watercolor drawing. The building to the right takes up two-thirds of the composition, and has a tall, pale brown roof, round-topped arches, and a section with gray engaged columns and pillars. The bottom zone is loosely sketched in with a few faint gray lines. Farthest from us, the white tower between the other two buildings has four levels of pointed arches. A spire extends from the right front corner of the tower, and the top edge of the entire structure is lined in spiky ornamentation. The third building, close to the left edge of the sheet, is a two-story wood structure with a tiled roof. The sky is painted ice blue in the narrow slivers between the buildings with some blank areas suggesting streaks of clouds. Cursive writing in graphite along the right edge of the paper reads, “Stairs and columns of Gothic arch Building.”