Beach Views and Seascapes
Works by Joaquin Sorolla, Jane Peterson, John Sloan and Paul Signac
© Meg Nola
May 17, 2009
Whether the Atlantic or Pacific, Mediterranean, Adriatic or any other of the world’s oceans and seas that turn warm and inviting in the summer, if there is a beach with waves, artists will show up to paint the scenery. Beyond even rushing tides, sailboats, sand and sun, beachgoers also inspire the painterly eye — some beautiful, others comic or haunting, but all lured out to the water’s edge, just like the artists themselves.
Sorolla’s Walk on the Beach
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) was born in Spain and enjoyed great success during his lifetime. Sorolla’s work had realistic and Impressionist leanings, and he was undeniably inspired by beach scenes of his native Valencia. During various summers he produced many Valencia beach paintings, including his family and children at play, fisherwomen, peasants, and even oxen by the sea.
Sorolla was an expert at depicting coastal light and billowing winds, and his Walk on the Beach (1909) shows two young women in white dresses that flutter like sails. Forced by their era and social status to keep hidden under such long skirts — with accompanying parasols and hats — the women enjoy a lovely day as much as they possibly can, while Sorolla creates masterful effects of sun, shadow and flowing fabric.
Jane Peterson’s Beach Scene
Illinois-born Jane Peterson (1876-1965) studied with Joaquin Sorolla in her earlier years. The independent-minded Peterson is noted for linking American Impressionism and Expressionism, and Peterson’s 1935 Beach Scene is a colorful example of her unique style. Like Sorolla, Peterson had a fine eye for the effects of light at the beach, but unlike Sorolla’s demure young ladies, Peterson’s women wear more modern bathing suits and indifferently expose bare shoulders, arms and legs.
John Sloan’s South Beach Bathers
John Sloan (1871-1951) was a member of a group of artists known as The Eight, often called the Ashcan School Painters. Sloan and his fellow Eight felt it important to capture realistic scenes from American life instead of concentrating only on beautiful or idyllic views.
Sloan’s South Beach Bathers follows this Eight credo, with men sprawling on the sand, picnicking, ball throwing, women letting their hair down and swimmers wading into the tide. In Sloan’s 1908 painting there is a sense of what public beaches often meant to working-class people of the early 20th century, and how the ocean provided an outdoor escape from hot summer days. Sloan opted to depict a day at New York’s Staten Island South Beach because South Beach was less crowded than Brooklyn's famed Coney Island, and therefore gave Sloan a chance to truly focus on his subjects.
Signac’s Pink Cloud
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was born in Paris and like friend and fellow artist Georges Seurat shifted from looser Impressionist brushwork to styles using precise arrangements of color known as Pointillism and Divisionism. Signac was an avid sailor and generally took off during the summer season on a boat he called Olympia, named after Edouard Manet‘s scandalous nude of 1865.
While on board, Signac produced quick watercolor studies of sights which he would later expand into larger paintings when he was back in the studio. Signac’s Antibes, the Pink Cloud (1916) is a fascinating composition of gentle colors and deceptively simple shapes, offering a dreamlike, hazy view of France’s Côte d’Azur — with only a closer look revealing the background shadow of German gunboats, which like World War I would soon threaten the peaceful scene.
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