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Sea Scenes Seen in
Blues and Greens
Visual Essay
By Bruce McMillan and
noted American, Dutch, French,
Norwegian, and Ukrainian/Russian artists.
Storm Wave Sea
Bruce McMillan (1947- ), American
Watercolor and ink on paper, 14" x 11" (w x h), 2025
off Cape Neddick by Nubble Island, York, Maine.
$750
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Wave on Rock
John Marin (1870-1953), American
Oil on canvas, 30" x 23" (w x h), 1937
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Source: Whitney Museum notes editedBlues and Greens
Visual Essay
By Bruce McMillan and
noted American, Dutch, French,
Norwegian, and Ukrainian/Russian artists.
Bruce McMillan (1947- ), American
Watercolor and ink on paper, 14" x 11" (w x h), 2025
off Cape Neddick by Nubble Island, York, Maine.
$750
Wave on Rock
John Marin (1870-1953), American
Oil on canvas, 30" x 23" (w x h), 1937
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Wave on Rock exemplifies John Marin's expressive painterly technique as well as his devotion to nature as subject matter. Inspired by the rugged marine grandeur of Maine, where he began spending his summers in 1914, his brush strokes emulate the choppy sea and crashing of foaming waves. Their improvisational character suggests the quick recording of a moment. Marin the artist always insisted on the realist foundations of his work. "The sea I paint may not be the sea but it is not an abstraction."
Rocks and Swirling Water
Edward Hopper (1882-1967), American
Oil on paperboard, 13" x 10" (w x h), circa 1916-1919
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Edward Hopper's seascapes depict strong light and fair weather. He showed little interest in snow or rain scenes, or in seasonal color changes. He painted the majority of his pure seascapes between 1916 and 1919 on Monhegan Island, and likely the one above. Hopper was first drawn to Maine's art colonies at Ogunquit and Monhegan Island. His paintings have appeared on five US Postage Stamps, two of them Maine coastal scenes in Ogunquit. His oil painting Sea at Ogunquit, 1914, which also has that blue/green sea, appeared in March 2020 on a US Stamp representing the 200th year of Maine becoming the 23rd state on March 15, 1820. See that art at the Whitney Museum HERE.
Waves
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Norwegian
Oil on canvas, 38" x 45" (w x h), 1908
A breakdown in 1908 forced Edvard Munch to give up heavy drinking. Painting in Germany that year he plunged into a different approach with his seascapes in Warnemünde, a seaside resort in Rostock on the Baltic Sea. Waves is a dive into the wildness of the sea. Munch and the viewer flounder, barely distinguishing above from below. Munch was interested in the abstraction inherent in nature, capturing the patterns and rhythms created by the waves movement.
Sea Garden, Little Duck Island
William Kienbusch (1914-1980), American
Oil on canvas, 74" x 52" (w x h), 1960
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
A magna cum laude graduate of Princeton, William Kienbusch studied at the Art Students League, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Academy Colarossi, and with Abraham Rattner in Paris. He didn't find his true identity as an artist until he spent the summers of 1940 and 1941 in Stonington, Maine. Best known for semi-abstract landscapes, Kienbusch spent summers photographing and sketching the pine trees, buoys, and shacks of the Maine coast, then during the winter months, while teaching at the Brooklyn Museum School, translated his summer's work into geometrically formulated landscapes.
Blue Wave Maine
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), American
Oil on canvas, 27" x 20" (w x h), 1926
Private collection
Long Sands Beach is a gentle three-mile curve in York, Maine. Likely, its vastness, the open sea unbound from Maine's craggy coastline, pummeled by waves and made famous years before by the state's resident artist-hermit, Winslow Homer, attracted her. On Long Sands for four summers in the 1920s, O'Keeffe could live and work where the rocky shore softened and fell flat along the water, unbroken for miles. Here, there was only sand, sea, and sky. It was her 1920s summer painting stays that were the precursor to 1930s sands of New Mexico and her iconic paintings.
Calm sea
Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), Russian, Ukrainian
Oil on canvas, 38" x 26" (w x h), 1898
Aivazovsky National Art Gallery, Feodosiya, Ukraine
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) was a Russian painter considered one of the greatest masters of marine art. The vast majority of his works depict the sea. He was born into an Armenian family in the Black Sea port of Feodosia in Crimea and was mostly based there. Aivazovsky had close ties with the military and political elite of the Russian Empire. Sponsored by the state, he was well-regarded during his lifetime. The saying "worthy of Aivazovsky's brush", popularized by Anton Chekhov, was used in Russia for describing something lovely. He was also popular outside the Russian Empire, holding numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and the US. Aivazovsky's house in Feodosia, where he had founded an art museum in 1880, is open to this day as the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery. It remains a central attraction in the city and holds the world's largest collection (417) of Aivazovsky paintings.
Waves Breaking
Claude Monet (1840-1926), French
Oil on canvas, 32" x 24" (w x h), 1881
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,
San Francisco, CA
In the 1880s Claude Monet focused on the elemental aspect of nature. This was painted on the northwest coast of France in Normandy as Monet faced out toward the sea, using quick, textural strokes evoking the churning motion of water and frothy crests of the waves.
Zeegezicht bij Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer /
Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch
Oil on canvas, 225" x 20" (w x h), 1888
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Van Gogh moved to the southern French coastal city of Arles in 1888. He was 33-year-old and it was only two years before his death. When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June. Among the things he painted there including his noted bedroom painting, he painted boats on the sea, like the one above, and the village. He gave art lessons to Paul-Eugène Milliet, a 2nd Lieutenant at the French army's 3rd Zouave Regiment, which had quarters in Arles. In return Milliet took a roll of paintings by Van Gogh to Paris, when in mid August he was passing the French capital on his way to the North, where Milliet spent his holidays. On his return to Arles, at the end of September 1888, Milliet handed over a batch of Ukiyo-e woodcuts and other prints selected by Vincent's brother Theo from their collection. In the days that followed Vincent executed a portrait of him, The Lover (Portrait of Lieutenant Milliet), seen at the Kroller Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands HERE.
