American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Provenance:

(Possibly) Lake View Gallery, New York, New York, by 1976.

(Probably) William Vareika Fine Arts Ltd, Newport, Rhode Island.

Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC, New York, New York.

Acquired directly from the above, 2009.

Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York.

Acquired directly from the above, 2012.

Private Collection, New York.

Exhibited:

Newport, The Newport Gallery of American Art, William Vareika Fine Arts, Ltd., "Homage to the Sea," July 11 - September 14, 2008 (as Rocky Shore).

Literature:

William Vareika Fine Arts, Ltd., Homage to the Sea, Newport, 2008, n.p., illus. (as Rocky Shore).

Lot Note:

Born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, William Bradford began painting in the early 1850s, after abandoning ship-outfitting and other business endeavors. The 1850s were indeed a formative decade for the artist, who embarked on a painting career by exploring the shorelines of his native region, including Nahant.

Bradford’s devotion to realism is evident in Rocky Shore, Nahant. His rendering of the soaked and chiseled rocks, dazzling and salient against the moody sky, is detailed and precise. But just as it appears truthful to nature, it also conjures feelings of awe and peril. This intimidating—if fascinating—sight indicates that Bradford was equally concerned with verisimilitude as he was interested in the way natural light interacts with the water surface and informs the atmosphere of a coastal seascape. Beyond the nearly photographic quality of his manner, a reverence to romantic and luminist techniques is unmistakable.

In Rocky Shore, Nahant, the harsh outline of the jagged rocks contrasts with the subdued textures of the grey sky and blue sea. Two planes are vying for dominance in the composition, as the soft horizon collides with the implacable diagonal of the rugged shore. This landscape, at once inviting and menacing, foreshadows the serrated surfaces of the iconic icebergs from Bradford’s notable Arctic exhibitions of the 1860s and 1870s. It reveals his early interest in the humbling rawness of nature, and his eagerness to make it approachable in all its grandeur, if only pictorially.