Al Held painted watercolors at his second home in the Umbrian hills of Italy. Their very titles suggest an intimate, domestic setting. Victoria was Held’s longtime housekeeper, and Primo her cousin who also worked as a gardener. In Italy, Held would “go dreamy,” in the words of his daughter Mara, absorbing the shapes, colors, and vistas and reimagining them in his highly formalized pictorial language. Some watercolors became the starting points for new painting series, while others contain unique imagery unseen in any of his other work.