Seas the Splash Art Essay

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Seas the Splash

See surf crashing and splashing in these eight notable paintings as small as 4" x 5" to as large as 34" x 50" (h x w).

1
Monhegan Breaker
Abraham J. Bogdanove (1886-1946), American,
(Born Russian, moved to US at 14-years-old in 1900)
Oil on Masonite, 24" x 20" (w x h), 1942
Monhegan Museum of Art & History, Monhegan Island, ME

Source: Wiki edited
Bogdanove first visited Maine in 1915, summering at Mount Desert Island, and in 1918 he visited Monhegan Island, purchasing a house there in 1920. Thereafter he visited Monhegan every year until his death in 1946, becoming an established presence on the island and producing a series of landscapes and seascapes that would constitute the largest part of his painting, his interest in the powerful dramatic effects of weather on the ocean and land, rather than geographically specific depictions. Bogdanove said in an interview in 1936 of his work on Monhegan, he described it as "rugged, colorful, and forceful. There are a number of reasons why I prefer Monhegan to all other places on the Atlantic coast... The cliffs are so bold and precipitous and the studies offered by the island shore so inexhaustible. The climate suits me. Perhaps because it is more like that of Russia, where my ancestors lived."

2
Cannibal Shore
N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), American
Oil on canvas, 47" x 30" (w x h), circa 1936
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME

Source: Wiki and Brandywine bio notes edited
N.C. Wyeth, who was both a painter and an illustrator, understood the difference, and said in 1908, "Painting and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other." N.C spent summers from 1920 to 1945 on the Maine coast producing notable paintings, not illustrations.

3
Stormy Seascape
John Appleton Brown, (1844-1902), American
Pastel on brown paperboard, 18" x 14" (w x h), circa 1880s
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA

Source: Wiki edited
John Appleton Brown (1844-1902) was an American landscape painter working largely in pastels and oils. For many years he worked and showed in Boston, summering in his native northeastern Massachusetts and painting his best-known landscapes there. Poetry inspired Appleton Brown's pictures, so too did his art inspire poetry. Will Amos Reed's book of verse Through Broken Reeds contains the poem "On Seeing a Picture by J. Appleton Brown." It begins, "How deep in nature's lore must artists dip / To form such lights and shadows with a brush's tip!" His works are now housed in such institutions as the Harvard University art museums, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

4
Northeaster
Winslow Homer (1836-1910), American
Oil on canvas, 50" x 34" (w x h), 1895, reworked 1901
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Source: Wiki edited
Winslow Homer's late seascapes are especially valued for their dramatic and forceful expression of nature's powers, and for their beauty and intensity. In his last decade, 1900-1910, he at times followed the advice he had given a student artist in 1907: "Leave rocks for your old age -- they're easy." Homer died in 1910 at the age of 74 in his Prouts Neck, Maine studio.

5
Crashing Surf at White Head, Monhegan
Sears Gallagher (1869-1955), American
Watercolor on paper, 20" x 14" (w x h)
2022 Auction sold: $1,500
Grogan and Company, Boston, MA

Source: Wiki edited
Sears Gallagher (1869-1955) was an American artist proficient in drawing, etching, watercolor and oil painting. His work consisted largely of landscapes, seascapes, and city-scapes depicting his native Boston and northern New England. In 1892, Gallagher made a summer trip to Monhegan Island. Monhegan, which Gallagher visited regularly for the next 40 years and where he bought a house in 1904. Monhegan was a frequent subject of his painting, its rocky shore and bold cliffs of Monhegan appear in his paintings. His summer visits to Monhegan were often followed by fishing and sketching trips in the fall to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

6
Rocks, Waves and Figures
Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924), American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 16" x 11" (w x h), circa 1902-1904
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

Source: Barnes Foundation notes edited
As waves crash around them, several gaily dressed women recline on rocks next to the ocean. Prendergast, whose influences ranged from the crowded spectacles of medieval mosaics to the emergent art of his day, was considered a pioneer of American modernism. In this painting he experimented with the bold color palette of Edouard Manet as well as the dramatic silhouettes -- seen especially in the white, frothing waves -- of Winslow Homer.

7
Crashing Waves, Ogunquit
Leon Kroll (1884-1974), American
Oil on panel, 5" x 4" (w x h), 1915
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997

Source: Wiki edited
Leon Kroll (1884-1974) was an American painter and lithographer. A figurative artist described by Life magazine as "the dean of U.S. nude painters", see a collection of his nudes in this Google selection HERE. He was also a landscape painter and also produced an exceptional body of still life compositions. In 1911 and 1912, he showed in the group exhibition of The Independents initiated by Robert Henri at the MacDowell Club in New York. "It was a self chosen group: you had to be elected by the other ten. Hopper was in it and Speicher, John Sloan as well as Henri, Glackens and Luks - It was a very good group of the best artists" said Kroll.

8
Monhegan Island
Robert Henri (1865-1929), American
Oil on oak panel, 10" x 8" (w x h), unframed, 1903
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME

Source: Wiki edited
From 1915 to 1927, Henri was a popular and influential teacher at the Art Students League of New York. "He gave his students, not a style (though some imitated him), but an attitude, an approach, [to art]." The significance and often formative influence of Henri as a teacher and mentor is estimable. He also was instrumental in promoting women to be artists. Henri's philosophical and practical musings were collected by former pupil Margery Ryerson and published as The Art Spirit (1923), a book that remained in print for decades. Henri's other students include George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Lillian Cotton, Amy Londoner, John Sloan, Minerva Teichert, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. In 1929 at 64-years-old , the year he died, Robert Henri was named one of the top three living American artists by the Arts Council of New York.