Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Gilbert Stuart, Edward Stow, c. 1803, oil on wood, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1942.8.23

Edward Stow

Gilbert Stuart · c. 1803 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1942.8.23

About three dozen men and women sit, stand, or stroll along a sandy beach beneath a sunset-streaked sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The people are small in scale within the landscape, taking up about a quarter of the canvas's height. The scene is loosely painted so many of the facial features are indistinct, but the faces we can see have pale or olive-toned skin. The area closest to us is a strip of sand, and, a short distance away, a brown and white dog sits facing away from us to our left of center. The women all wear dresses with long sleeves, tight bodices, and ankle-length hoop skirts in shades of baby blue, smoke gray, butter yellow, chocolate brown, crimson red, black, or white. Some wear jackets, capes, or shawls, and veils flutter off some of their hats and bonnets. The men wear suits with long tails and rounded hats. Most of the people sit in wooden chairs, and a few stand or walk along the beach. The walking women carrying long sticks or canes. Smudges of ruby red, slate blue, and a touch of straw yellow could be the form of a child crouching in the sand, to our left. Two ladderback chairs sit near the crowd to our right. The horizon comes less than a quarter of the way up the composition. Thin screens of pale gray clouds above are touched on the undersides with petal pink, and they break to show peeks of soft yellow along the horizon and topaz blue a bit higher up.
Eugène Boudin, The Beach at Villerville, 1864, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.4

The Beach at Villerville

Eugène Boudin · 1864 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.4

Shown from the knees up, a young woman with pale skin and flushed cheeks looks at us, wearing a long, shimmering white dress partially draped with powder-blue fabric in this vertical portrait painting. The brushstrokes are loose in her clothing but blended in her face, giving the portrait a soft, almost blurred look. Her body is angled to our right but she turns to look directly at us. Her dark, chestnut-brown hair is piled loosely on her head. A dark form could be a feather or small hat set to one side. Her eyes may be two different colors; her right eye is grayish-blue and her right eye looks almost green. She has a straight, snub nose, and her fuchsia-pink lips are parted in a small smile. There is a faint suggestion of a cleft in her pointed chin. Her white dress has a low, scooped neck and a tight-fitting bodice over a flaring skirt. Powder blue-fabric drapes over her right shoulder, closer to us, and might be pinned or pulled through a gold ring there. The blue fabric appears on her left hip, farther from us, suggesting it may wrap across her back. The sheen of the white dress and blue fabric suggests silk. The artist signed the work in cursive letters in the upper left, “John S. Sargent,” and dated it in the upper right, “1902.”
John Singer Sargent, Mary Crowninshield Endicott Chamberlain (Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain), 1902, oil on canvas, Gift of the sitter, Mary Endicott Chamberlain Carnegie, 1958.2.1

Mary Crowninshield Endicott Chamberlain (Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain)

John Singer Sargent · 1902 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1958.2.1

Félix-Hilaire Buhot, Matinée d'Hiver sur les Quais, 1883, etching, drypoint, roulette, aquatint, and sand paper ground onlaid paper, Gift of Jacob Kainen, 2002.98.415

Matinée d'Hiver sur les Quais

Félix-Hilaire Buhot · 1883 · etching, drypoint, roulette, aquatint, and sand paper ground onlaid paper ·  Accession ID  2002.98.415