1910
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
In the Surf (recto) is a 1910 unspecified by Edward Henry Potthast, a American Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a sunlit beach crowded with people—kids splashing in shallow waves, mothers in long skirts holding hands, men in dark suits wading up to their knees. Potthast painted these scenes over and over during New England summers. He liked how the light turned wet skin and fabric almost see-through, so the figures look soft and glowing, not sharp. The colors are bright but not flashy, like a memory of a perfect day. Look up other paintings of america, american to see how different artists showed the same coastline.
Born in Cincinnati, Potthast studied in Munich and Paris before returning to the United States, where he began spending summers along the coast of New England. There he studied the carefree seaside activities of bathers and picnickers. Although he never married, he was particularly fond of painting young mothers and their children.
During the early 1900s, modesty dictated women’s bathing suit designs featuring long, loose-fitting skirts.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Edward Henry Potthast was an American Impressionist painter. He is known for his paintings of people at leisure in Central Park, and on the beaches of New York and New England.
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