.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work will be included in M. Ran’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.
On the Beach possibly depicts Coney Island, New York, based on an inscription on the stretcher. Starting around 1910, Edward Henry Potthast sought out the beaches of New York, most notably Coney Island and Rockaway Beach, to depict the rising tides of leisure culture. As industrialization drove the middle and upper classes to seek respite in nature, celebrating and depicting leisure became commonplace among Impressionist circles. Standing at the intersection of Impressionism and Realism, Potthast embraced the bustle of places such as Coney Island, Far Rockaway and Brighton Beach, the more populist haunts. Like the Realists, Potthast focused on energetic compositions rather than the kind of languid gentility often portrayed by the Impressionists; yet, like the Impressionists, he painted in a palette of high color and lightness. On the Beach depicts three women and a girl running towards the waves, as a distant figure swims in the water. With artistic bravura and a painterly surface, Potthast renders this impressive work with a masterly sense of composition as the figures' clothes flutter in the ocean breeze. As in the present work, according to Diane Smith-Hurd, Potthast’s painting is “at its best with subtleties of color in reflected light, as well as color in direct sun-shine.” (Edward Henry Potthast, 1857-1927: An American Painter, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1994, n.p.)
The original owner of the present work, E.C. Babcock, was the director from 1917-40 of Babcock Galleries, the oldest American Art gallery still in existence. During Babcock's tenure as director, he represented and sold works by some of the most important artists of the day, including Potthast. Notable sales by Babcock include Winslow Homer's The Gale to the Worcester Art Museum in 1916 for $30,000 and Gilbert Stuart's Thomas Jefferson in 1927, a rediscovered work subsequently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. and Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia.
On the Beach possibly depicts Coney Island, New York, based on an inscription on the stretcher. Starting around 1910, Edward Henry Potthast sought out the beaches of New York, most notably Coney Island and Rockaway Beach, to depict the rising tides of leisure culture. As industrialization drove the middle and upper classes to seek respite in nature, celebrating and depicting leisure became commonplace among Impressionist circles. Standing at the intersection of Impressionism and Realism, Potthast embraced the bustle of places such as Coney Island, Far Rockaway and Brighton Beach, the more populist haunts. Like the Realists, Potthast focused on energetic compositions rather than the kind of languid gentility often portrayed by the Impressionists; yet, like the Impressionists, he painted in a palette of high color and lightness. On the Beach depicts three women and a girl running towards the waves, as a distant figure swims in the water. With artistic bravura and a painterly surface, Potthast renders this impressive work with a masterly sense of composition as the figures' clothes flutter in the ocean breeze. As in the present work, according to Diane Smith-Hurd, Potthast’s painting is “at its best with subtleties of color in reflected light, as well as color in direct sun-shine.” (Edward Henry Potthast, 1857-1927: An American Painter, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1994, n.p.)
The original owner of the present work, E.C. Babcock, was the director from 1917-40 of Babcock Galleries, the oldest American Art gallery still in existence. During Babcock's tenure as director, he represented and sold works by some of the most important artists of the day, including Potthast. Notable sales by Babcock include Winslow Homer's The Gale to the Worcester Art Museum in 1916 for $30,000 and Gilbert Stuart's Thomas Jefferson in 1927, a rediscovered work subsequently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. and Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia.