Plein Air New England

This exhibit encompasses the work of 19th and early 20th century artists artists who have painted New England scenes in a wide variety of subjects, mediums and styles. The dozen I have chosen to spotlight represent the inspiring diversity that is the artistic heritage of the region.

Harrison Bird Brown (1831-1915)

View of Grand Manan

Oil on Canvas 10x18

Harrison Bird Brown was born in 1831 in Portland, Maine, and is best known for his White Mountain landscapes and marine paintings of Maine's Casco Bay. By 1860, Brown was being praised as a leading American marine painter.

Landscape painting was popular in the mid 19th century, thanks in part to the influence of Charles Codman (1800-1842), whose paintings were collected for their very romantic sentiments. It is possible that Brown saw examples of Codman's poetic paintings, and was influenced by his works. Brown was one of the early artists to paint the coastline of Maine's Monhegan Island, where he depicted the headlands as awesome, mystical forces. Humanity versus nature, and the human relationship to nature, themes prevalent in mid and late-19th century literature and philosophy, figured frequently in his seascapes.

He often painted in the White Mountains, and his name can be found in the guest registers of many places artists frequented in those mountains. The coast of Maine was also a favorite painting venue of Brown's for over thirty years. He depicted the wholesome outdoor environment of the state, with special fondness for the Casco Bay area and Grand Manan, an island off the New Brunswick, Canada coast. Brown also produced two widely distributed illustrations of Crawford Notch for the Maine Central Railroad in 1890.

Harrison Bird Brown exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1858 to 1860, and at the Boston Athenaeum and Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. By 1892 he had become the best known native Maine painter of his time, and gained fame for himself and the state with a large canvas in the Maine pavilion of the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago. In 1892 he was elected president of the Portland Society of Art.

Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908)

Figure in a Boat Near Shore

Monogrammed l.r., labels from Barridoff Galleries, Portland,

Watercolor and gouache en grisaille on paper,

sight size 2 3/8 x 6 in. framed

Born April 10,1837, Portsmouth, NH, Bricher grew up in Newburyport, MA. Largely self-taught by careful study of Cole, Church and Durand, Bricher studied art at Lowell Institute, Boston in the 1850's. In the 1860s he followed his contemporaries to the White Mountains, and was active in Boston and Newburyport, MA until 1868 when he moved to New York.

Bricher was a significant second-generation Hudson River School landscapist and marine painter who is considered to be the last of the relevant American luminists. He is best known for his marine paintings depicting New England shorelines, in which crashing waves show the dynamic forces of nature.With ease and finesse he captured the natural ambiance around the ocean and its coasts and the artist’s reverence for the presence of what is before him is apparent. Keeping in step with the philosophical beliefs of his era, the artist was concerned with equating to canvas the resplendence of nature and the morality of his convictions. He executed his best work during the 1870s-80s when he spent many summers painting on the coasts of Massachusetts, Maine (Monhegan Island), and Rhode Island (1871-76), as well on Long Island, especially at Southampton.

Today A.T. Bricher is considered one of the finest marine painters of his era, and his work is in great demand because each of his canvases and watercolors show resplendently and with confident brushwork how nature looked during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Walter C Hartson (American, 1866-1946)

Landscape with Houses (oil on canvas, 16x20)
In a frame measuring 22 x 26

Walter C Hartson, 1866-1946, was born in Iowa, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then in New York City, Holland and England. On his return from Europe he painted mainly in New York and New England including the Old Lyme and Litchfield Connecticut areas, exhibiting widely from the 1895 Atlanta Expo to Pennsylvania Academy, Chicago, National Academy of Design, Boston Art Club, Corcoran Gallery and more, and he won several prizes. He lived in New York City early in the 20th century, settling upstate in Wassaic New York around 1917. In the 1930s he was honored in his mature years to be included in the New York State WPA Art Project, with its emphasis on artistic renderings of historic buildings to record them in their settings for posterity -- thus his late impressionist oils of old stone houses along rivers in New York's Columbia and Dutchess Counties.

Peter Bela Mayer (1887-1993)
Vermont Winter
10" x 14" oil on board Condition: Excellent

Peter Bela Mayer is primarily known for his impressionist works of the New England landscape and locations near his home on Long Island at Port Washington. He was born in Hungary and added the name Peter in the 1940s to avoid confusion with female painters. From 1908 to 1915, he studied at the National Academy of Design. He first earned public attention in 1914 when one of his pieces was shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. During the 1920s, he exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Source: 300 Years of American Art, by Michael David Zellman

Paul Wesley Arndt, 1881-1978.

Winter Stream, (oil on canvas, 21" x 27")
frame from Belgium 26.5" X 32.25".

Paul Wesley Arndt was trained by in Paris by Jean Leon-Gerome at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago. This oil on canvas depicts a snow covered stream outside Woodstock and is signed and dated 1929 lower right.

Winter's Retreat

Bernard Corey

Oil on Masonite, 10.5 x 14 in. Condition: Excellent.

Bernard Corey (1914-2000) is nationally recognized as one of the finest plein air landscape painters active in New England during the twentieth century. Corey painted on location all over the Northeast alongside other great New England masters who were his friends including Lester Stevens, Emile Gruppe, and many others. Memberships included the Rockport Art Association, Salmagundi Club, the Guild of Boston Artists, North Shore Art Association and more. Having won over 100 awards and honors, some include awards at the North Shore Art Association, Rockport Art Association, Salmagundi Club, NYC, Hudson Valley Art Association, Providence Water Color Club, Allied Artists of America and many more.

Forest Interior (oil on canvas, 20" x 12")
by Maria a Becket (1840-1904)
Gilded Antique Gold frame, 33" x 29"

price available upon request

Maria A' Becket was a well listed American painter who is cited in many American art references of her era. She was born in 1840 in Portland, Maine, Daughter of Charles Beckett, a Maine Landscape and genre painter. In 1865 she studied with Homer Dodge Martin and later with William Morris Hunt in Boston. She was influenced by the Barbizon painters at Pont Aven and painted with the famous French painter Charles Daubigny during a trip to France.Though her Barbizon influence is often stressed, this work reveals strong elements of Tonalism and Impressionism and is quite similar to her seminal work “Northern Lights”. She exhibited at the Boston Art Club in 1875, the National Gallery in 1883 and 1888, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1880 to 1884 and the New York’s Women’s Club to name just a few. It is only recently that we have fully recognized the great talents of our American women painters and started to give them the praise which they so richly deserve. This new realization has made their works much in demand and valuable.

Spring, Harvard

Agnes Ann Abbot (1897-1992)

Oil on board, 14 1/2 x 17 Condition: Excellent

Agnes Abbot (1897-1992) was a prominent woman painter whose work in reflected the "New Realism" in the early twentieth century. Born in Germany, Abbot settled with her family in the Boston area in 1917 and graduated from the School of Fine Arts and Crafts in Boston in 1921. She had a long association with Wellesley College from 1920 to 1963. Studied and painted with Charles Woodbury, the founder of the Ogunqit School in Maine.

Grafton Vermont

J. Winthrop Andrews (American, b. 1879)

Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in.

in a Newcomb-Macklin frame.

William Henry Hilliard (American, 1836-1905)

Landscape with Houses (oil on canvas, 11 3/4" x 16 1/2")
In a frame measuring 15 1/2" x 20 1/4".

William Henry Hilliard, born in Auburn, New York, in 1836, was a painter of realistic, tonal landscapes related to the Hudson River School. He studied in New York City prior to painting in England and Scotland, then studying with Lambinet in Paris, France. Until 1878, he was based in New York City, but moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Though he did paint in the West before traveling to Europe to study, he later became known for his New England landscapes, views of Maine, the Atlantic Coast, White Mountains and Franconia Mountains. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design, New York City, from 1876 to 1888, and the Brooklyn Art Association, in New York, as well as many other national venues, winning prizes and medals.

Emil H. Meyer (American, b. 1863)

Trees by the Lake

Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61.0 cm), framed.

Born in Maryland, Emil Meyer was a painter and teacher who studied in Munich, Germany in 1891, and then settled in Washington DC, where he was active in the Society of Washington Artists. He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1890 and the National Academy of Design in 1891. In the early 1900s, he taught at Columbia University in New York.

Milton, Blue Hills
John Joseph Enneking (1841-1916)

Signed and dated "Enneking 93" l.l.,
catalog raissonee label from Pierce Galleries
14 x20 in Antique Frame 19 x 26

Known for Barbizon and Impressionist styles, Enneking was one of the most popular landscape painters of New England and one of its most successful financially. Enneking held membership at the Boston Art Club, Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts and the Salmagundi Club. His works are part of the collections of the Boston Museum of Art and the Worcester Art Museum, Farnsworth Art Museum,etc.

In 1868 he went to Boston, where he studied lithography and began to paint landscapes. The catalyst for his success came while studying in France with Leon Bonnat and Charles Francois Daubigny during the 1870s on an extended stay, and when he is said to have painted with Monet. Enneking returned to Boston in 1876, and in 1878, his first solo in Boston sealed his reputation. Beginning in the early 1880s he spent summers in North Newry, ME. He also painted frequently in the White Mountains, favoring its trout brooks and woodland scenes.

William Lester Stevens (American, 1888-1969)

Barn in the Valley

Oil on canvas, 18 x 22 in.

Born in Rockport, Massachusetts, Stevens spent four years at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts School, where he studied under Edmund Tarbell, among others. Primarily an oil painter, he also used watercolor and acrylics. He is best known for his post-impressionistic landscapes. Throughout the course of his long career, Stevens taught, first in Rockport, then at Boston University (1925-1926) and Princeton (1927-1929), and during the Depression at Grand Manan. He was a National Academician and a member of the American Watercolor Society; a founding member of the Rockport Art Association; Springfield, MA Art League; Guild of Boston Artists; Gallery on Moors; New Haven Paint and Clay Club, CT; Gloucester Society of Art; North Shore Art Association; Boston Watercolor Club and the New York Watercolor Club. He won art awards at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; American Watercolor Society; New Haven Paint and Clay Club; Springfield Art League; Salons of America; Washington Watercolor Club; North Shore AA; Rockport AA and more.

Harry Hambro Howe (1886-1968)

Landscape with Houses (oil on canvas, 16 x 20)
In a frame measuring 20 x 24

Fine oil on artist board painting of a New England river scene by listed American artist, Harry Hambro Howe (1886-1968). Harry H. Howe was the son of T. Bailey Howe who is well known (T. Bailey) as an early 20th century New England painter known for his paintings of clipper ships and harbor scenes. His son, Harry H. Howe lived in Maine and he also painted New England scenes, clipper ships and Nantucket scenes. This oil painting is in very good condition and there are some vibrant colors and nice evening light with lots of shades of pink and blue in the sky.

Wayne Beam Morrell (American, b. 1923)

Ipswich River Golden Sunset

Oil on board, 24 x 36 in. (61.0 x 91.4 cm), framed.

Wayne Beam Morrell was born in New Jersey in 1923 and as a young child took an immediate liking towards drawing. As a result, he attended the Philadelphia School of Industrial Arts studied draftsmanship and commercial art. Morrell worked as a commercial artist and served in the United States army during the Korean War. After the war, he began painting in 1953 with great success and subsequently left his career as a commercial designer to devote his energy full time to the fine arts. Since then he has exhibited his impressionistic works internationally to great acclaim.

Drawing from his personal life and everyday surroundings gave Morrell greater depth and understanding of his home in New England and these works are what he is best known for. Morrell is a member of many artists associations including the American Artists, and the Rockport Art Association. His art can be found in the Butler Institute of American Art, the Columbus Museum of Fine Art, the American Watercolor Society, the Vermont Art Association, the Rockport Art Association, and in private collections throughout the United States.