Dancing Fleet

Among Armin Hansen’s most celebrated works are those that feature the boats and the sea off the Northern California coast. After traveling through Europe, painting in Germany and Belgium, and spending four years as a deck hand, Hansen returned to the area of his birth and settled on the Monterey Peninsula around 1915. In Monterey, Hansen continued with his interest in capturing his surroundings, particularly as they related to the sea. A prominent plein air painter, Hansen’s Dancing Fleet allows for the composition to coalesce naturally as a typical day in the harbor unfolds below. Unlike in his record-setting painting, Decoration, Hansen has chosen to pare down his depiction of figures to mere suggested forms and let the colors and shape of the sails lead the viewer’s eye through his rendering of the deep blue bay.