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Four women with pale, peach skin, wearing long white dresses, stand or sit on a sunny beach in this wide, horizontal painting. People and carriages are painted as hazy gray silhouettes spread along the beach in the distance. The silhouettes span the left half of the horizon, which comes halfway up the painting. To our right, the water is a pale blue with loose strokes of white, light gray, and ice blue to suggest waves and surf. On the pale sand, three of the women sit close to us, huddled under two broad parasols on a brown blanket. Their bodies face the water, and their features and clothing are loosely painted. The woman closest to us has a white dress with lapis-blue bows down the front and a blue sash tied at her back. Her flat, round, straw-yellow hat is tied onto her head with a black bow. She wears a yellow glove on the hand we can see, and she props one parasol over her far shoulder. The inside of the parasol is bright blue, the outside cream white. The other two women sit together under the second parasol, also cream colored. In the center of the trio, the woman wears an olive-green shawl or wrap, and her reddish-brown hair might be loose over her shoulders. The third seated woman wears a bright red wrap and a dark hat. A bit behind these women, a fourth stands looking toward them or the water. She also wears a long white dress under a vivid red jacket and a small brown cap. She holds her skirt with one hand and touches her hat with another gloved hand. Another loosely painted form farther back along the beach appears to be a woman wearing black and holding a white parasol. The artist signed and dated the painting with the location in the bottom right corner: “W. H. 1874 East Hampton L. I.”

Winslow Homer

East Hampton Beach, Long Island, 1874

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 25.8 × 55.1 cm (10 3/16 × 21 11/16 in.)

framed: 33.02 × 62.23 × 5.4 cm (13 × 24 1/2 × 2 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

2012.89.2

Artists / Makers

Winslow Homer (artist) American, 1836 - 1910

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower right: W. H. 1874 / East Hampton L.I.

Provenance

Acquired c. 1956 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by William Roerick [1913-1995], Los Angeles; sold to (Zabriskie Gallery, New York); sold 1961 to Harold K. Hochschild [1892-1981], Princeton. (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 22 October 1981, no. 54). Dr. and Mrs. John E. Larkin, Jr., Dellwood, Minnesota; (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 2 June 1983, no. 77). Paul Mellon [1907-1999], Upperville, Virginia; bequest 1999 to NGA, with life interest to Mrs. Mellon; life interest released 2012.

Associated Names

Hochschild, Harold K.
Larkin, John E. Jr. Dr. and Mrs.
Mellon, Paul
Mellon, Rachel Lambert, Estate of
Roerick, William
Sotheby's
Zabriskie Gallery

Exhibition History

1957: Loan to display with permanent collection, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, 1957.

1958: Winslow Homer: A Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1958-1959, no. 31, repro.

1959: A Retrospective Exhibition: Winslow Homer, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1959, no. 27.

1963: Winslow Homer in New York State, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NewYork, 1963, no. 2.

1973: Winslow Homer, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago, 1973, no. 28 (shown only in New York).

2019: Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter's Journey, 1869-1880, Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, 2019, no. 50, repro.

Bibliography

1957: Roerick, William. "Edward W. Root as Teacher." Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Bulletin (March 1957): n.p., repro.

1961: Gardner, Albert Ten Eyck. Winslow Homer, American Artist: His World and His Work. New York, 1961: repro. 124.

1969: Goodrich, David L. "How to Find Art Treasure in Your Attic." Family Weekly newspaper circular (16 March 1969): n.p.

1997: Harrison, Helen A. "Light of the Island Inspires its Artists." The New York Times (28 September 1997).

2005: Goodrich, Lloyd, and Abigail Booth Gerdts. Record of Works by Winslow Homer, vol. 2. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2005, no. 539.