Past Exhibition

American Light

A pink-toned sandy beach meets a placid body of pale blue water under a hazy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. To our left, the beach curves like a letter C to end in the near distance with a terracotta-orange rocky outcropping and a boulder, which comes halfway across the composition. Muted green trees grow atop the outcropping, and the left half is blanketed in moss or grass. A white rowboat has been pulled into the sand about halfway along the beach. One person sits or crouches inside, and a red cloth or net hangs over the side closer to us. A person wearing a straw hat, white, long-sleeved shirt, and brown pants carries a basket over one arm as they walk away from us, not far from the rowboat. The water is very light blue where it laps gently at the shore but is washed by diffuse sunlight to parchment white in the distance. The horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas, nearly blends into the milky white bank of clouds above. A few sailboats are near the horizon on the right half of the painting, and a few small patches of blue sky show through the clouds in the upper right corner.
John Frederick Kensett, Beach at Beverly, c. 1869/1872, oil on canvas, Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr., 1978.6.5

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    West Building, Ground Floor, Central Gallery, Galleries G-1 through G-10 (12,000 sq. ft.)
A pink-toned sandy beach meets a placid body of pale blue water under a hazy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. To our left, the beach curves like a letter C to end in the near distance with a terracotta-orange rocky outcropping and a boulder, which comes halfway across the composition. Muted green trees grow atop the outcropping, and the left half is blanketed in moss or grass. A white rowboat has been pulled into the sand about halfway along the beach. One person sits or crouches inside, and a red cloth or net hangs over the side closer to us. A person wearing a straw hat, white, long-sleeved shirt, and brown pants carries a basket over one arm as they walk away from us, not far from the rowboat. The water is very light blue where it laps gently at the shore but is washed by diffuse sunlight to parchment white in the distance. The horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas, nearly blends into the milky white bank of clouds above. A few sailboats are near the horizon on the right half of the painting, and a few small patches of blue sky show through the clouds in the upper right corner.
John Frederick Kensett, Beach at Beverly, c. 1869/1872, oil on canvas, Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr., 1978.6.5

Overview: More than 160 paintings, 49 drawings and watercolors, and 47 photographs reflected the luminist period in 19th-century American landscape painting. Emphasized were the work of Fitz Hugh Lane, Martin Johnson Heade, Sanford Gifford, John F. Kensett, and Frederic Edwin Church, as well as their antecedents and successors in the Hudson River School.

Organization: John Wilmerding, with Linda Ayres, organized the exhibition of works from this newly identified period. Gaillard Ravenel and Mark Leithauser designed the exhibition and Gordon Anson designed the lighting.

Attendance: 317,890

Catalog: American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850-1875, by John Wilmerding et al. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1980.

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