At the Beach

Addison Scurlock, Picnic Group, Highland Beach, Maryland, c. 1931, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund), 2015.19.4446

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Two pale-skinned little girls sit back-to-back on a sandy beach, almost filling the width of this vertical painting. The girls wear matching pale, ice-blue pinafores over short sleeve, ocean-blue dresses. Both sit with their legs stretched in front of them and angled to our right. The girl closest to us, to our left, looks down at the denim-blue pail and wooden shovel she holds between her ankles. She holds the long-handled shovel in her near hand with the end inside the pail. She has a chubby, flushed, round face with blond hair and rosy arms and legs. She wears black shoes and appears to have a brown sock on her near leg but a dark blue sock on the other. Her companion sits just beyond her and to our right with her body turned away from us. Her wide-brimmed straw hat is trimmed with a tomato-red ribbon tied in a bow at the front. The hat hides her face, and her outstretched legs are encased in olive-green stockings. Her near hand reaches across her lap to grab the pail sitting on the far side of her legs. The beach meets the pale blue and aquamarine ocean in the upper third of the painting. A patch of strokes and daubs of dark blue and peach near the upper left and a tan wedge in the water to our right are painted loosely along the shoreline. Two white sailboats and a horizontal white dash with three dark blue dots drift on the water. The artist signed the lower right, “Mary Cassatt.”

Mary Cassatt, Children Playing on the Beach, 1884, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.19

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Margaret Burroughs, On the Beach, c. 1957, linocut, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.340

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Roy Lichtenstein, Serge Lozingot, Edward Henderson, Gemini G.E.L., At the Beach, 1978, color lithograph on Arches 88 wove paper, Gift of Gemini G.E.L. and the Artist, 1991.74.146

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Harry Sternberg, Four Seasons: Summer, 1941, color screenprint, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4640

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Jacques Villon, Woman in Blue at the Beach, 1902/1904, watercolor over graphite on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.71

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Mark Rothko, Figure at a Beach, (drawing), Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., 1986.56.573

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American 20th Century, Detroit Photographic Company, On the Beach at Coney Island, published 1902, photo-chromolithograph, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon, 2018.177.190

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James Van Der Zee, Posing at the Beach, c. 1925, gelatin silver print, Avalon Fund, 2019.127.15

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Wilson Shieh, Crown Point Press, Catherine Brooks, Dena Schuckit, Swimmer, 2005, color softground etching with aquatint on gampi paper chine collé mounted onto wove Somerset paper, Gift of Kathan Brown, 2011.119.114

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