Adam Van Doren’s subject is the built environment: The gates of Harvard. The town houses of Back Bay. Steeples and bridges and mansard roofs. Boston is a place Van Doren returns to time and again to capture with his brush, mostly working outdoors—as he does in Venice, Rome, Paris, and New York. After studying architecture and working at several firms, Van Doren turned to watercolor, and with a focus on historic buildings. In New York, he was invited to join the Painting Group, a distinguished circle founded in the 1950s. J. M. W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, Paul Signac, Maurice Prendergast, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth: In his personal pantheon of watercolorists, Van Doren reserves a place for each of these. He trains his eye on the smaller details, the part rather than the whole—which is why he sets up his easel outside older buildings, with their riot of gables and ovals and arches and columns. “I think the Seagram Building is a beautiful building,” he explains, “but I’m not sure I’d be excited about painting it.” —Cullen Murphy