A Place in the Sun
The annual Summer Reading exhibition at Hawthorne Fine Art showcases beach scenes that echo the spirit of the season
Hawthorne Fine Art’s annual summer show is back again to welcome the exuberance of the summer months with a myriad of seascapes and beach scenes, aptly titled Summer Reading: Sand and Beaches. The exhibition, which is on display through the end of August, evokes summer sentiments through the marine and coastal works of artists like Francis Augustus Silva, Jane Peterson, Hobart Nichols Jr., Fidelia Bridges,addison Thomas Millar, George Washington
Nicholson, Frederick W. Smith and Clark Greenwood Voorhees, among others.
The gallery cites a passage from Environment and Tourism by Andrew Holden as part of the theme connecting the works curated for the show:“the rise of the American beach resort town as a tourist destination coincided with rapid industrialization in the nineteenth century.while visits to the coast were common in the first half of the nineteenth century, mostly for reasons related to health, the seashore came to symbolize recreation, leisure, and even anti-urban values by the latter half of the century.”
“I like finding a theme that unites the images and seeing how each painting
relates to it differently all adding their own unique spin on similar ideas,” says Jennifer C. Krieger, managing partner for Hawthorne Fine Art. Silva’s Clearing Off depicts tumultuous waves, likely that of the beach near Silva’s beloved home in Long Branch, New Jersey. “it gives such a heroic vision of the sea but also relays tender details in the sand, the shells and seaweed that are part of the surf,” says Krieger.
Another standout in the exhibition, according to Krieger, is Nichols’ On the Beach, which brings forth the more subdued, leisurely aspects of summer. “It is such a quintessential image of American impressionist beach imagery with the elegant ladies and children,” she says.
Reminiscent of the summer reading assignments often given to children over the long break, paintings in the exhibition will be paired with a complementary excerpt from a book or poem.