I N A PERFECT WORLD 
 
 l * . Bermuda in the Context of American Landscape Painting 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/inperfectworldbeOObook 
 
IN A PERFECT WORLD 
 
 Bermuda in the Context of American Landscape Painting 
 
 Judith Bookbinder 
 
 McMullen Museum of Art 
 Boston College 
 
This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition 
 In a Perfect World: Bermuda in the Context of American Landscape Painting, 
 curated by Judith Bookbinder and organized by the Charles S. and 
 Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 
 in collaboration with the Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda. 
 
 May 16 to September 15, 2002 
 
 Copyright © 2002 by the Charles S. and 
 Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 
 
 Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. 
 
 ISBN 1-892850-03-6 
 
 Exhibition and Publication Coordination by Thea Keith-Lucas 
 Copyediting by Naomi Blumberg and Thea Keith-Lucas 
 Designer: Keith Ake Art Director: Andrew Capitos 
 Produced by the Office of Marketing and Communications 
 at Boston College OMC # 2011 
 
 Cover: 
 
 Winslow Homer (1836-1910) 
 
 Inland Waters, 1901 
 Watercolor on paper, 13.75 x 21 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 This exhibition is presented by Fidelity Investments through 
 the Fidelity Foundation and the FIL Foundation, Bermuda. 
 
 Fidelity 
 
 Investments 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 5 PREFACE 
 
 7 INTRODUCTION: BERMUDA ON THE MIND 
 
 8 IDEALIZED IMAGES OF THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 
 
 17 BERMUDA AS A NEXUS OF THE REAL AND THE IDEAL 
 
 27 ENDNOTES 
 
 31 PLATES OF SELECTED WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION 
 
 53 LIST OF WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION 
 
PREFACE 
 
 CONCEIVED IN THE WAKE of the tragic events of 
 September n, 2001, this book and the exhibition that it 
 accompanies examine the thesis that American painters 
 in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries turned to 
 idealized landscapes for comfort during troublesome 
 times both in their own land and on the nearby, idyllic 
 island of Bermuda. As Utopian and other social reform- 
 ers, Transcendentalists, and Swedenborgians sought bal- 
 ance through attention to human and spiritual needs, so 
 artists turned to nature to provide a place of refuge in a 
 conflicted world. Beginning with works by artists of the 
 Hudson River School, through Luminist, Tonalist, and 
 Impressionist interpretations, to twentieth-century paint- 
 ings influenced by Cubist form and Fauve color, this exhi- 
 bition traces how American artists used various strategies 
 to discover stability, order, and tranquility in nature. 
 
 The genesis of this exhibition came about as a truly 
 collaborative confluence of good ideas presented to us by 
 several key groups of people and brought together by our 
 
 chief curator Alston Conley. First, John and Jacqueline 
 McMullen had encouraged us to organize an exhibition 
 of paintings by George Inness. They introduced us to the 
 director, Patterson Sims, and the curator, Gail Stavitsky, 
 of the Montclair Art Museum, who generously agreed to 
 loan works from their collection. Our Museum Patrons’ 
 Committee had suggested an exhibition of American 
 landscape paintings, which are so well represented in 
 our own permanent collection and those of our alumni. 
 
 At the same time, Tom Butterfield, the founding chair- 
 man, and Elise Outerbridge, the curator of the Bermuda 
 Masterworks Foundation presented us with the possibil- 
 ity of showing works from the Foundation’s collection 
 of paintings. 
 
 We then asked Professor Judith Bookbinder, a scholar 
 of American painting in the Fine Arts department at 
 Boston College, to serve as curator for an exhibition that 
 would look at works assembled from these various sources 
 from a new perspective. It was she who conceived the 
 
thesis explored here. She selected the paintings and wrote 
 this catalogue. Her vision, energy and intelligence perme- 
 ate all aspects of this project; to her we extend our deepest 
 thanks and congratulations. 
 
 This endeavor benefited from the help of many who 
 assisted in various ways with research and loans: Christa 
 Balderacchi, Mark and Jennifer Brock, C. Michael Daley, 
 Leah and Alec Petro, John Slavin; Tom Butterfield and 
 Elise Outerbridge (Bermuda Masterworks Foundation); 
 Patterson Sims, Gail Stavitsky, Renee Powley, Margaret 
 Molnar, and Toni Liquori (Montclair Art Museum); Adam 
 Weinberg, Susan Faxon, and Denise Johnson (Addison 
 Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy), and Malcolm 
 Rogers, Sue Reed, Clifford Ackley, Christopher Atkins, 
 Patricia Loiko, and Kim Pashko (Museum of Fine Arts, 
 Boston). 
 
 The staff of the McMullen Museum and others from 
 across the University also contributed to this project. Our 
 chief curator, Alston Conley aided in the selection of 
 works and designed the installation; our exhibitions and 
 publications coordinator Dorothea Keith-Lucas oversaw 
 with great efficiency and discernment the editing and pro- 
 duction of the catalogue and the loans of paintings; and 
 our administrator, Helen Swartz coordinated all efforts. 
 Further words of appreciation are due Naomi Blumberg 
 
 for editorial assistance, Andrew Capitos and Keith Ake 
 for the elegant design of the catalogue, Rosanne Pellegrini 
 for publicity, Steven Vedder, Gary Gilbert and Lee 
 Pellegrini for photography, and Lisa Hastings and Gemma 
 Dorsey for assistance in securing funding. 
 
 This project could not have been carried out without 
 substantial support from the administration of Boston 
 College, specifically the president William P. Leahy, 
 academic vice-president John Neuhauser, associate dean 
 of faculties Patricia DeLeeuw, and dean of arts and 
 sciences Joseph Quinn. Very generous support provided 
 by Fidelity Investments through the Fidelity Foundation 
 and the FIL Foundation, Bermuda enabled us to turn 
 this idea into a reality. To each of them, I extend a heartfelt 
 vote of thanks. It is our hope that this probing of the 
 beautiful in painting might provide to the viewers of this 
 exhibition and readers of this catalogue the comfort, 
 solace and place of refuge from a troubled world that it 
 did for our ancestors. 
 
 Nancy Netzer 
 
 Director, McMullen Museum of Art 
 Professor of Art History, Boston College 
 
IN A PERFECT WORLD! 
 
 BERMUDA IN THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN 
 LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 Introduction: Bermuda on the Mind 
 
 WORN OUT BY WHAT he termed “frail nerves”, 
 Marsden Hartley sailed to Bermuda in June 1935. In the 
 midst of the Depression years, the previous winter had 
 been a trying time of personal loss and financial struggle 
 for him. In January, unable to pay the continuing costs of 
 storing his unsold canvases and drawings in a New York 
 warehouse, he had destroyed over one hundred of his 
 works rather than see them auctioned off at distressed 
 prices in a warehouse sale. As he carried out that grim 
 task, he held in his pocket a letter notifying him that his 
 poverty-stricken sister had recently died. By spring, the 
 sale of a painting permitted him to escape the site of such 
 unhappiness, and he immediately left for a place that 
 promised refreshment and renewal. “Bermuda is what it 
 is,” he wrote, “nothing whatever but sunlight — soft air — 
 and the water like thermal baths, and they have soothed 
 me quite a bit.” In this environment, he observed the 
 coral reef that surrounds the island, and he painted 
 Sunken Treasure. 
 
 In voyaging to a remote island, Hartley was following 
 a pattern that numerous American landscape painters had 
 established in the prior century. They had traveled near 
 and sometimes very far believing that they would find 
 comfort, courage, pride, or strength in nature. In creating 
 Sunken Treasure (no. 14), which is at once a transcript of 
 Hartley’s visual experience and a conceptual abstraction, 
 he also connected with the tradition of idealized images of 
 nature. “I have made the complete return to nature,” 
 Hartley had announced in 1928, “and nature is, as we all 
 know, primarily an intellectual idea. I am satisfied that 
 painting also is, like nature, an intellectual idea....” Partic- 
 ularly in times of trouble, whether personal or communal, 
 painters such as Hartley have seen in nature the reflection 
 of their own needs. This exhibition examines how artists 
 have used an idealized form-language to create visual 
 projections of their best hopes “in a perfect world” while 
 recognizing the limitations of the real world. 
 
 Painters who journeyed to Bermuda from the last 
 
decade of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth 
 century brought with them a wide variety of stylistic con- 
 ventions in which they interpreted their experiences of 
 landscape. In styles ranging from Impressionism to 
 Fauvism and Cubism, they created images that ultimately 
 conveyed an idealized sense of order and harmony. This 
 
 exhibition considers their images in the context of the tra- 
 jectory of idealized American landscape painting of the 
 nineteenth century, when painters used classical, roman- 
 tic, naturalistic, and impressionist approaches to con- 
 struct images that offered comfort to viewers in often 
 troubled times. 
 
 Idealized Images of the American Landscape 
 
 LANDSCAPE PAINTING BEGAN in earnest as the 
 country confronted the challenge of defining American 
 national identity. The War of 1812 settled the question of 
 America’s independence from Britain, and, with the com- 
 pletion of the Erie Canal in 1825, shipping and commerce 
 extended the country’s reach from inland waterways to 
 the Atlantic. The character and extent of the country re- 
 mained in flux as new states and territories were added to 
 the Union, immigration expanded and diversified the 
 population, and steam technology forecast new industrial 
 possibilities. The debate on national identity paralleled 
 the effort of artists to find images resonant with the needs 
 of society and to develop a coherent sequence of pictorial 
 inventions and responses. The nature of national iden- 
 tity and the nature of American art were situated in the 
 land itself as Americans, in general, and artists, in partic- 
 ular, began to define the United States. 
 
 Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) was among the first to 
 paint landscapes with a discernible American character. 
 As early as the 1830s, he set out for Mount Desert Island 
 off the Maine coast to find a place of unspoiled beauty, 
 called by some a “New World Island of Cythera,” and he 
 produced some of the earliest paintings of that isolated 
 
 landscape. More often, he journeyed to the rural regions 
 of New York State, where he combined the facts he ob- 
 served with atmospheric effects and classical structure to 
 create pastoral reveries such as In the Catskills. Images 
 such as this one established a paradigm for early dialogue 
 on the American landscape. 
 
 Ironically, Doughty looked to European models to 
 bring structure and order to his American scenes. Draw- 
 ing on a formula that had been employed by painters at 
 the court of Louis XIV, particularly Claude Lorraine, 
 Doughty constructed a view of the land of upstate New 
 York in which the observer is invited to proceed along a 
 clear path into a sunlit and tranquil space framed and bal- 
 anced by feathery trees. As the Sun King had needed to 
 believe that his power was reflected in an orderly world, 
 Doughty’s audience was comforted to see its hopes for a 
 harmonious and secure land confirmed in In the Catskills, 
 where tiny figures enjoy a picnic in a benevolent and pro- 
 tected landscape. 
 
 More topographically specific than In the Catskills, 
 Doughty’s view of the Hudson River near West Point (no.i) 
 became an enduring geographical paradigm and the 
 point of departure for artists who would be identified by 
 
that locale regardless of the specific places they chose to 
 record. His painting represents “perhaps the most canon- 
 ical site of American landscape art," Nicolai Cikovsky 
 states, “a region that would soon become as sanctified for 
 American landscape artists as the Roman Campagna and 
 the forest of Fontainebleau had been for European ones.” 
 The Hudson River School became synonymous with im- 
 ages of sweeping breadth that combined the specifics of 
 place with grandeur of vision and idealized perfection 
 often suggesting divine presence. 
 
 Hudson River near West Point takes the viewer, literally, 
 to a higher plane where the exhilarating vista conjures 
 thoughts of power and possession. From an elevated 
 clearing, the viewer looks down on the river valley and out 
 toward the distant horizon signifying a future of expan- 
 sive possibility. “The landscape view from the heights,” 
 Albert Boime argues, would typify many nineteenth- 
 century American landscape paintings, “revealing in their 
 common structural paradigm the sociopolitical ideology 
 of expansionist thought.” Jefferson’s purchase of the 
 Louisiana Territory in 1803 inaugurated the campaign for 
 westward expansion under the imprimatur of “Manifest 
 Destiny”. This belief that the United States was ordained 
 by God to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific would 
 serve as the rallying cry as the United States continued to 
 acquire territory throughout the century. 
 
 As the United States labored to take its place with the 
 great nation-states of Europe, insecurities about national 
 identity were ameliorated by the belief that the country 
 had the support of divine powers manifested in its land. 
 The metaphoric discourse of much of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury was laced with references to the transcendence of the 
 American landscape. “In the woods is perpetual youth,” 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson declared. "Within these plantations 
 of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival 
 is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of 
 them in a thousand years.” Nature offered not only evi- 
 dence of God, but also an orderly model for society. “In 
 the woods,” Emerson continued, “we return to reason and 
 faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, - no 
 disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature 
 cannot repair.” 
 
 Landscape painters turned their tools to creating im- 
 ages expressive of the same divine presence. “The truths 
 of light and atmosphere that absorbed American artists,” 
 Barbara Novak observes, “quickly served a concept of na- 
 ture as God, turning landscape paintings into proto- 
 icons.” These landscape/icons were also configured to 
 represent the ideal order of God’s handiwork. “[T]he per- 
 fect solution,” Novak states, “was one that reconciled the 
 real and the ideal, the tangible and the ephemeral, that in- 
 fused the inviolate ‘stuff’ of God’s world with Godhead.” 
 
 Thomas Cole (1801-1848), who had emigrated from 
 England to America as a child, took up the challenge of 
 manifesting the presence of God through the specific fea- 
 tures of his adopted land. Confident that “those scenes of 
 solitude from which the hand of nature has never been 
 lifted affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion 
 than aught which the hand of man has touched,” he set 
 out to create images of unspoiled wilderness, which 
 would inspire “the consequent associations... of God the 
 creator” because their models "are his undefiled works 
 and the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal 
 things.” Thus, Cole climbed the heights near his 
 Catskill home, or in western Massachusetts, or on Mount 
 Desert Island to experience the presence of God in un- 
 
Fig. 1 
 
 spoiled nature and to paint works like View of the Round- 
 
 Oxbow of the Conecticut River 
 near Northhampton 
 
 Oil on canvas, 51.5 x 76 in. 
 
 The Metropolitan Museum of 
 Art. Gift of Russell Sage. 1908. 
 
 top in the Catskill Mountains. 
 
 Cole’s friend and “kindred spirit”, the poet William 
 Cullen Bryant, described the same exhilarating experience 
 in his poem Monument Mountain: 
 
 10 
 
 Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild 
 
 Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, 
 
 Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot 
 
 Fail not with weariness, for on their top 
 
 The beauty and the majesty of earth, 
 
 Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget 
 
 The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou standest, 
 
 The haunts of men below thee, and around 
 
 The mountain summits, thy expanding heart 
 
 Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world 
 
 To which thou art translated, and partake 
 
 The enlargement of thy vision. 
 
 While Bryant was unambiguous in his statement, Cole 
 often left the viewer to wonder about the future. Painrings 
 like Oxbow of the Connecticut River near Northampton 
 (fig. 1) raise numerous questions. Will the pastoral land- 
 scape of neatly planted fields and placid rivers dotted with 
 occasional boats continue to coexist with the untamed 
 
 wilderness? Can God’s immanence in nature withstand 
 the onslaught of civilization? Cole soon witnessed the 
 price of progress in his own environment. 
 
 When the Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes to the 
 east coast in 1825, most Americans still lived along the 
 eastern seaboard. However, almost immediately railroads 
 began to make the Erie and other canals obsolete as they 
 cut through new territory with hitherto unimagined speed 
 and carried the population westward. Cole could only 
 
 watch helplessly as the Catskill and Canajoharie Railroad 
 began to lay track on land adjacent to his property in 1835. 
 “The copper-hearted barbarians are cutting all the trees 
 down in the beautiful valley on which I have looked so 
 often with a loving eye,” Cole lamented to Luman Reed, 
 his patron, in March 1836. “Tell this to Durand,” Cole’s 
 friend and fellow painter, “not that I wish to give him 
 pain, but that I want him to join me in maledictions on all 
 dollar-godded utilitarians.” To express his anger, Cole 
 wrote a poem entided The Complaint of the Forest : 
 
 All then was harmony and peace - but man 
 Arose - he who now vaunts antiquity - 
 He the destroyer - amid the shades 
 Of oriental realms, destruction’s work began - 
 And dissonant - the axe - the unresting axe 
 Incessant smote our venerable ranks.... 
 
 Throughout the century, artists as diverse as Cole, 
 George Inness, and Winslow Homer would use the image 
 of the axe and the fallen tree as a metaphor for the cost of 
 
progress. The following year, as if to defy reality, Cole 
 painted View on the Catskill — Early Autumn (fig. 2) in 
 which he ignored the presence of the railroad in his back- 
 yard. Cole’s construction of a fictive scene that trans- 
 formed the facts of reality into an idealized and more 
 appealing image of pastoral progress established a prece- 
 dent that other members of the Hudson River School 
 and their descendants would follow. 
 
 For much of the nineteenth century, Jasper Cropsey 
 (1823-1900) approached nature in the Hudson River 
 School manner utilizing precisely rendered details to con- 
 struct idealized images of an expansive landscape bathed 
 in ethereal light. Bom on Staten Island, he traveled 
 throughout New Jersey, New York, and New England gath- 
 ering site-specific material to transform into panoramic 
 visions. His Landscape of 1875 abandons the framed Clau- 
 dian formula for an open, strongly horizontal composi- 
 tion that leads the viewer through a closely delineated 
 foreground, where a cottage stands almost lost in soft 
 shadow, into a broadly painted sunlit distance. As Susan 
 Faxon has observed, Cropsey’s idyllic image of the lush 
 American countryside testifies to “the happy accommoda- 
 tion of nature and man.” In “Up among the Clouds”, an 
 essay he wrote in 1855 for The Crayon, Cropsey revealed 
 his penchant for finding idealized vistas even in the sky. 
 “Grand masses of dreamy forms floating by each other, 
 sometimes looking like magic palaces, rising higher and 
 higher, and then toppling over in deep valleys, to rise 
 again in ridges like snowy mountains,” reminded him 
 that, “In boyhood, we have often watched this dream- 
 world, and peopled it with angels [and] in manhood, from 
 the cares of life we have turned, and been refreshed by the 
 glimpses of its ‘silver lining.’” In drawing larger mean- 
 
 ing from detailed observation, Cropsey was unifying 
 Cole’s vision with Asher Durand’s advice, which had also 
 appeared in The Crayon in 1855, that the painter should 
 “go first to Nature to paint landscape”. 
 
 As he explored the wilderness in search of an ideal 
 America, John Casilear (1811-1893) was a * so drawn to 
 combine Cole’s more conceptual and Durand’s more vi- 
 sual approaches. While maintaining a highly successful 
 business in New York that specialized in banknote engrav- 
 ing, Casilear was also able to study painting with Durand 
 who was Casilear’s life-long friend and mentor. In fact, in 
 1831 Durand purchased Casilear’s first significant land- 
 scape painting, and nine years later Casilear traveled to 
 Europe for the first time with Durand and two other 
 
 painters, John Kensett and Thomas Rossiter. The group 11 
 
 was particularly impressed with the Claude Lorraine 
 paintings they saw in Paris. The richness of these land- 
 scapes was a revelation because, like most art students in 
 America, Casilear and his friends had only seen engraved 
 illustrations of the European paintings they emulated. 
 
 Casilear’s Hudson River Scene (no. 15) transposes the Clau- 
 
dian model into a localized North American site. Feathery 
 trees in a shadowed foreground create an asymmetric 
 frame that beckons the viewer to enter the space and 
 move gradually along the waterway, into the soft pastel 
 planes of the distance, to a pink horizon. 
 
 Here Casilear presents the double message of the 
 Hudson River School: that humanity can rejoice in the 
 harmony of nature as seen in the American wilderness, 
 and, at the same time, occupy that benign wilderness 
 without altering its balance. This message resonated in 
 the intense atmosphere of the 1840s when the annexation 
 of Texas, the settling of the Oregon Territory border dis- 
 pute with Canada, and the end of the war with Mexico ex- 
 panded the United States to the Pacific Ocean. This 
 growth inaugurated fierce debates over whether that vast 
 landscape would be developed and whether slavery would 
 be permitted in the various territories and new states. 
 Amid the public scramble for land rights and political 
 control, artists blazed trails for others to follow from the 
 Catskills to California. “The summer of 1849 was spent by 
 Messrs. Casilear and Kensett at Haines Falls and Kaater- 
 skill Clove,” a newspaper reported, “and their ladders and 
 paths were the first by which that portentous gorge was 
 rendered easy of access.” The images they produced 
 would also encourage others to follow. 
 
 Benjamin Champney (1817-1907) joined the same in- 
 trepid group to explore New England in the 1850s and set- 
 tled permanently in a house and studio on the main street 
 of North Conway, New Hampshire. By that time, the val- 
 leys surrounding the White Mountains were becoming 
 easily accessible by railroad from Boston and New York, 
 and by 1853 forty painters were working in North Conway. 
 In spite of the changes in the area, Champney’s paintings 
 
 perpetuated the image of pristine wilderness and mini- 
 mal pastoral development. In his painting of Mote 
 Mountain from Walker’s Pond (no. 16), he applied the Clau- 
 dian bucolic formula to an intimate foreground space in 
 an unusual vertical format. The rocky banks of a small 
 inlet with gossamer trees frame a view of the distant 
 mountain lying low on the horizon. Silvery light suffuses 
 the atmosphere binding the calm waters and clear sky in a 
 harmony of cool tones. In this work, the linear clarity and 
 realistic detail of the earlier Hudson River School painters 
 give way to generalized forms in an overall tonality. Its 
 new quiet and contemplative mood signals a change in 
 American landscape painting that has been termed Lu- 
 minist. While the vertical orientation of Champney’s 
 painting is unusual for the Luminist style, which gener- 
 ally has a strong horizontal emphasis and an open, un- 
 framed composition, its expressive light and total stillness 
 exhibit the salient features of Luminism. 
 
 Luminism evolved in an era of doubt and crisis in the 
 
 I 
 
 1850s and ‘60s as the nation stridently declared its territo- 
 rial mandate while factional disputes undermined its in- 
 tegrity. In response, Transcendentalists called for silence 
 and more intimate communion with God in nature. 
 “Those divine sounds which are uttered to our inward 
 ear,” Henry David Thoreau noted, “which are breathed in 
 with the zephyr or reflected from the lake — come to us 
 noiselessly, bathing the temples of the soul, as we stand 
 motionless amid the rocks. The halloo is the creature of 
 walls and mason-work; the whisper is fitted in the depths 
 of the wood, or by the shore of the lake; but silence is best 
 adapted to the acoustics of space.” 
 
 Painters took the lead in projecting the image of peace 
 so that, by late i860, The Crayon could report, “Notwith- 
 
standing the political commotion, the art world pursues 
 the even tenor of its ways. Artists are now busy in their 
 studios with the harmonies of nature, not its discords. 
 
 We cannot help but think that the general cultivation of 
 artistic feeling and perception would be of great political 
 advantage.” 
 
 George Loring Brown (1814-1889) subordinated the 
 details of his View of Norwalk Islands, Norwalk, Connecti- 
 cut (no. 17) to the overall stillness and horizontality of this 
 panoramic Luminist view where humanity and nature re- 
 side “in cultivated harmony”. The figure of the fisher- 
 man in the left foreground is scaled to a space that 
 contains but does not overwhelm him. He, the sailboats 
 that dot the calm, coastal waters, and the tree at the far 
 right are vertical counterweights in perfect balance with 
 the horizon line. Brown achieved a classical equilibrium, 
 similar to Dutch landscape painting in its structure, 
 which may have served as a source of inspiration for 
 some of the Luminists as they searched for visual 
 metaphors of security in the period of the Civil War. 
 
 No painter was more in need of solace than Sanford 
 Gifford (1823-1880), who saw active service at the front 
 and lost his two brothers in the Union cause. Charles was 
 killed in an early battle in 1861. Edward was captured 
 during the Battle of New Orleans in 1863 when he 
 volunteered for a dangerous mission. He escaped by 
 swimming across the Mississippi River but later 
 contracted typhoid fever and died. In 1864, Gifford re- 
 turned to his studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in 
 New York, but he soon left for Mount Desert, Maine as 
 Doughty and Cole had done before him. Unlike his pred- 
 ecessors, however, Gifford traveled to this still relatively 
 isolated island to find healing, rather than exaltation, in 
 
 nature. His Lake Scene — Mountain Background (no. 2), 
 painted after his trip to Maine, reflects his effort to tran- 
 scend the specifics of site and to idealize the “forest 
 primeval”. The tight linearity of Brown’s rendering of the 
 Norwalk coast gives way here to a golden glow that dis- 
 solves detail and unifies an unframed and limitless space. 
 Loose, painterly, quasi-impressionist bnishstrokes sug- 
 gest evanescent form presaging Gifford’s later comment 
 that, “the really important matter is not the natural object 
 itself, but the veil or medium through which we see it.” 
 
 During the Civil War, in works such as Approaching 
 Storm, Beach at Newport, Martin Johnson Heade 
 (1819-1904) depicted the coasts and marshes of Rhode 
 Island and Massachusetts with darkening skies and the 
 stillness of imminent danger. His later paintings, Sailing 
 by Moonlight (no. 18) and Low Clouds over a Marsh, con- 
 tain the same classical structure of strong horizontal lines 
 punctuated sparingly by a lone sailboat or a few isolated 
 haystacks that had characterized his paintings of the 
 1860s. Yet in both the more linear coastal scene and the 
 more impressionistic marsh scene, the tension and fore- 
 boding of the wartime landscapes have given way to 
 serenity. The glowing circle of moonlight and its reflec- 
 tion form a vertical path drawing the viewer into the cool 
 blue horizontal space of Sailing by Moonlight. In Low 
 Clouds over a Marsh, Heade again used light, here a warm 
 rosy tonality, to unify the unbroken line of the horizon 
 and the vertical rhythms of marsh grass, haystacks, and 
 distant trees. Only the softly scumbled clouds provide 
 tonal contrast, although they still reinforce the horizontal- 
 ity of the composition. 
 
 Thomas Moran (1837-1926) was able to find perfect 
 balance and classical order in small-scaled landscape, par- 
 
 ’3 
 
14 
 
 ticularly near his home on Long Island and while travel- 
 ing through Florida. Although his operatic depictions of 
 the vast spaces of the West responded to the expansionist 
 call of Manifest Destiny through the 1870s, Moran’s later 
 paintings present nature in a quieter and nostalgic mood. 
 Moving back in time and space, the rowboats gliding 
 along an inland waterway in On the St.John’s River (no. 19) 
 allude to earlier days of river transport that had largely 
 been replaced by the age of steam. The muted tones and 
 painterly rendering seem to capture Samuel Clemens’s 
 nostalgic vision as Huckleberry Finn describes dawn as 
 seen on a river raft: “Not a sound, anywheres - perfectly 
 still - just like the whole world was asleep, only some- 
 times the bull-frogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to 
 see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line - 
 that was the woods on t’other side - you couldn’t make 
 nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more 
 paleness, spreading around; then the river softening up, 
 away off, and wam’t black any more, but gray....” In 
 Moran’s painting the forms of the riverbanks emerge 
 from a delicate haze along a low horizon line punctuated 
 by discrete vertical elements inviting the viewer to glide 
 
 Fig - 3 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 
 The Delaware Water Cap, 1857 
 
 Oil on canvas, 32 x 52.25 in. 
 The Montclair Art Museum 
 Gift of Mrs F.G Herman Fayen 
 30.2 
 
 smoothly into the plane of the river. 
 
 This voyage back in time as well as space was a recur- 
 ring theme for artists confronted with an increasingly in- 
 dustrialized world. “[Tjechnology, at first a thrilling agent 
 in the romance of science,” John Wilmerding notes, “now 
 was a disquieting invader of nature’s paradise.” George 
 Inness (1825-1894) began his career by saluting progress 
 in paintings of The Delaware Water Gap (fig. 3) and Lack- 
 awanna Valley, in which railroad trains steam into Clau- 
 dian landscapes of the Hudson River School mode. 
 However, Inness adopted an increasingly idealized and 
 
 abstract mode of rendering nature as he sought to rise 
 above material reality. “He uses nature’s forms,” a critic 
 noted about Inness in 1863, “simply as a language to ex- 
 press thought.” Under the influence of his early patron, 
 the Protestant minister and abolitionist Henry Ward 
 Beecher, Inness began to distill the raw material of the 
 natural world to its formal and conceptual essence. 
 Beecher declared Inness to be “the first of American 
 painters” and admonished that, “he will see the most 
 without, who has the most within,” adding, “he who only 
 sees with his bodily organs sees but surfaces.” Through- 
 out his career, Inness heeded Beecher’s advice and sought 
 to penetrate to the spiritual core of nature. 
 
 When Inness traveled to Paris in 1853, he encountered 
 paintings that reinforced his approach to landscape. He 
 identified with contemporary French artists who left their 
 urban studios to paint the bucolic scenery around the vil- 
 lage of Barbizon in the Fontainbleau forest. Although 
 these Barbizon painters worked en plein air, they orches- 
 trated light and idealized form to interpret rather than im- 
 itate the landscape they observed. 
 
Like the Barbizon painters, Inness left his urban home 
 to find a more peaceful working environment. His early 
 years, including some brief art instruction and an appren- 
 ticeship with an engraving firm, had been spent in New 
 Jersey and New York City. As a chronic epileptic condition 
 worsened in 1859, he decided to move to the quiet rural 
 village of Medfield, Massachusetts. Peter Bermingham 
 notes that the Medfield stay “brought him the sort of 
 physical and emotional relief he constantly sought 
 throughout his career.” During that three-year period, 
 he began to assemble a vocabulary of key motifs from 
 which he could draw at will to construct images of the 
 refuge he sought in nature. Open, rolling fields inter- 
 rupted by sometimes one, sometimes several trees, and 
 bordered by a distant line of trees define the basic format 
 of Medfield Landscape (no. 20), Summer Landscape, and 
 Autumn Landscape. Color differences of fields and skies 
 connote the character and temperature of the seasons 
 from the cool crisp spring-like blues and greens of the 
 first of these paintings, to the golden tones of the second, 
 to the touches of red and orange in the third. Even the 
 later, more generalized Late Afternoon, with its wispy, at- 
 tenuated trees and diffused light, recalls the same under- 
 lying formula. 
 
 From the Medfield years onward, Inness constructed 
 idealized landscapes of classical balance and order by 
 using increasingly broadly defined, open horizontal 
 planes punctuated by isolated vertical elements. The term 
 Tonalist is often applied to these subtle, quiet works that 
 capture the introspection of his conversion to Swedenborg- 
 ianism in 1867. Emanuel Swedenborg, an eighteenth- 
 century scientist, claimed that direct empirical experience 
 of the spiritual world proved the continuity of the material 
 
 and spiritual realms. His platonic view appealed to many 
 nineteenth-century American intellectuals inspired by 
 various manifestations of idealism from education re- 
 form, to abolition, temperance, and Transcendentalism. 
 “In Swedenborg,” Inness’s son observed, “George Inness 
 found the basis for his theory of art.... To him all nature 
 was symbolic - full of spiritual meaning.” Even the topo- 
 graphical features of Old Aqueduct, Campagna, Rome, 
 painted as a commercial venture during his second trip to 
 Europe in the early 1870s, transcend the typical tourist 
 view to become a meditation on light and time. Sunset 
 Glow (no. 3) manifests the Tonalist reductivism of In- 
 ness’s late works and his efforts to use natural forms to 
 reach a higher spirituality. His poem Exaltation captured 
 this effort: 
 
 Verse I: Sing joyfully! 
 
 Earth-bound no more, 
 
 We rise, 
 
 Creation speaks anew 
 In brighter tones. 
 
 Life now enthrones 
 Its imaged forms, 
 
 Winged with a joy that 
 Ne'er from nature grew. 
 
 In painting Sunset Glow, Inness achieved a transcendental 
 fusion of the subjective and objective and trembled on the 
 brink of abstraction. 
 
 In the meantime, other painters such as Dwight Tryon 
 (1849-1925) adopted Inness's more personal approach to 
 landscape. As Inness had before him, Tryon traveled to 
 France and gravitated toward the poetic plein-air painting 
 
of the Barbizon artists. Leaving the rigidity of the Paris 
 academies, Tryon moved to Auvers, north of Paris, to 
 work with Charles- Francois Daubigny, one of the few re- 
 maining original Barbizon painters. There, Tryon painted 
 Twilight at Auvers, a work that is more representational 
 than Inness’s Sunset Glow, but similar to it in structure 
 and transcendental spirit. The ethereal brushwork and in- 
 trospective mood of these paintings stand in quiet opposi- 
 tion to the growing materialism in America in the later 
 decades of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Tryon had traveled to Europe, as many American 
 painters and writers did, partially to find artistic inspira- 
 tion and partially to escape the onslaught of materialism 
 at home. He knew that European subjects appealed to 
 the taste of newly rich patrons who were bored with im- 
 ages of local sites and wanted paintings that would attest 
 to their newly acquired sophistication. Whatever Tryon’s 
 assessment of his patrons may have been, the editor of 
 The Nation typified those writers who were appalled by 
 this arriviste cultural elite. He declared that the United 
 States was a “gaudy stream of bespangled, belaced, and 
 beruffled barbarians” and asked and answered: “Who 
 knows how to be rich in America? Plenty of people know 
 how to get money; but... to be rich properly is, indeed, a 
 fine art. It requires culture, imagination, and character,” 
 qualities hard to find at home in the late nineteenth cen- 
 tury. “Many Americans,” historian Samuel P. Hays ob- 
 served, “drew back in disgust before the crudeness of the 
 new age and the graft, corruption, praise of material val- 
 ues, and destruction of resources which accompanied 
 it.” Tryon’s increasingly idealized and dematerialized 
 later landscapes seemed to offer an alternative to this ram- 
 pant materialism. In a similar way, the Utopian move- 
 
 ment and the plethora of Utopian novels it spawned in 
 the later nineteenth century, particularly Edward Bel- 
 lamy’s Looking Backward (1888), gave voice to those who 
 believed that a more perfect society was a possibility. 
 Artists and writers took every opportunity to explore new 
 models for social transformation or, at least, for cultural 
 and formal inspiration. 
 
 John La Farge (1835-1910) eagerly accepted Henry 
 Adams’s invitation to join him on a tour of Japan, which 
 promised a paradise unspoiled by the technology of the 
 West. As their ship entered Yokohama harbor on July 3, 
 1886, the natural beauty of the scene stunned La Farge. 
 “We are coming in,” he wrote in his handcrafted book, 
 
 An Artist’s Letters from Japan, "it is like the picture books. 
 Anything I can add will only be a filling in of detail.” 
 
 He included in his book drawings and watercolors of tem- 
 ples, landscape, and people he encountered, and he de- 
 scribed his visits to the Iyeyasu and Iyemitsu shrines on 
 the holy mountain of Nikko. In spite of the impressive- 
 ness of the structures, the natural features of Nikko in- 
 spired his strongest responses. “As we turn to the highest 
 court on the left and ascend slowly steep, high steps to a 
 gorgeous red gate above our heads, whose base we cannot 
 see,” he observed that, “the great cedars of the opposite 
 side are the real monuments....” In Landscape in Nikko, 
 he positioned the monumental cedars as the anchor of a 
 composition of simplified planes that simultaneously 
 represent atmospheric distance and flat surfaces in per- 
 fect balance. La Farge’s painting demonstrated that the 
 tranquility of the remote and exotic islands of Japan, 
 available only to the inveterate western traveler, could be 
 reconstituted in the image and enjoyed vicariously by 
 the viewer. 
 
Other late nineteenth-century painters and writers 
 chose to look closer at hand for sites of refuge. The poet 
 Celia Laughton Thaxter found Appledore Island, one of 
 the Isles of Shoals, ten miles off the New Hampshire 
 coast near Portsmouth. “The island itself,” Barbara 
 Weinberg observes, “was a place detached from the new 
 urban life and reassuringly identified - like Thaxter her- 
 self and her poetry - with the very bedrock of old New 
 England and earlier America.” Thaxter’s house on Ap- 
 pledore attracted painters, writers, and musicians eager 
 to escape the city heat of summer and to enjoy the cama- 
 raderie of an artists’ colony amid the austere remoteness 
 of these islands. Childe Hassam (1859-1935) was among 
 those eager to share Thaxter’s hospitality and the refuge 
 of Appledore. Even after her death in 1894, he returned 
 to the island where he painted Morning Calm, Appledore 
 (no. 4). The simplified planes of the rocky island, the 
 calm water, and pale summer sky recall the organization 
 
 Bermuda as a Nexus of 
 
 AS DOUGHTY HAD EXPLORED Mount Desert Is- 
 land, La Farge had voyaged to Japan, and Hassam had 
 traveled to Appledore, numerous American as well as 
 Canadian and European painters came to Bermuda. They 
 found, and continue to find, islands to be particularly en- 
 gaging as places of escape from the cares of civilization. 
 Bermuda’s low green landscape enfolded by a current of 
 Gulf Stream air is “an oasis of warmth in a cold and 
 seemingly endless sea,” a reality and a metaphor that 
 would resonate particularly for artists confronting the 
 physical hardships of northern environments. The island 
 
 and harmony of Luminist and Tonalist paintings, al- 
 though the almost square canvas configures the image 
 in a new way. 
 
 New, too, are the sparkle of light, the broken brush- 
 stroke, and the optical realism that reflect Hassam’s ab- 
 sorption of the Impressionist approach. Hassam, who 
 was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts and was the son 
 of a wealthy merchant, had access at an early age to art 
 instruction and foreign travel. In the 1880s, he studied at 
 the Academie Julien in Paris, set up a studio near Place 
 Pigalle, and learned at first hand about the experiments 
 of the French Impressionists. He brought their ideas 
 on rendering light and landscape back to the United 
 States in 1889, staying briefly in Boston before settling 
 in New York. From there, he traveled during summers 
 sometimes to Cos Cob or Old Lyme, Connecticut or to 
 Gloucester, Massachusetts, but he also returned to 
 Appledore’s isolated tranquility. 
 
 the Real and the Ideal 
 
 would attract American and European travelers with its 
 unique combination of the exotic and the familiar. Its 
 landscape of tropical turquoise water, pink sand, majestic 
 palms, and red and pink hibiscus and oleander is 
 inflected with winding roads, dark pines, and rocky 
 promontories that recall Cornwall in England or the coast 
 of Maine. 
 
 Yet, Bermuda was not always perceived as a salubrious 
 refuge. Tire cluster of islands that would become Britain’s 
 oldest self-ruling colony was named for its Spanish dis- 
 coverer, Juan de Bermudez, and first appeared on a map 
 
drawn by Peter Martyr in 1511. However, the formidable 
 seas crashing against the surrounding reefs so “affrighted 
 and dismaied” the sailors voyaging between the Old and 
 New Worlds that they called it the “Isle of Devils" and 
 avoided the area as much as possible for the remainder of 
 the sixteenth century. That reputation changed forever 
 in July 1609 when Admiral Sir George Somers miracu- 
 lously brought the Sea Venture, his foundering ship full of 
 English passengers bound for the fledgling colony of Vir- 
 ginia, to rest off Bermuda’s rocky shore. 
 
 From that time, Bermuda would continue to be per- 
 ceived as an elusive utopian paradise. Thirteen years after 
 the passengers of the Sea Venture set foot on the island’s 
 pink-tinted sands, a character in a play by the English 
 playwright, Thomas Middleton, declared, “E’en to seek 
 out a quiet life, my lord: I do hear of a fine peaceable is- 
 land.... Gentlemen, I am for the Bermudas.” A century 
 later, John Smibert, a young Scottish-bom artist working 
 in London, jumped at the opportunity to become drawing 
 instructor at the college the Protestant churchman Dean 
 George Berkeley intended to establish in Bermuda. The 
 Berkeley entourage landed at Newport, Rhode Island in 
 1728 to await Parliament’s approval of funds for the enter- 
 prise, a wait that would be in vain. The only lasting out- 
 come of the project is Smibert’s portrait of what came to 
 be called the Bermuda Group, an early testimony to an ide- 
 alistic vision often associated with the island. 
 
 For Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Bermuda certainly 
 seemed the antithesis of his home environment at Prout’s 
 Neck, Maine - at least in the wintertime - and he ren- 
 dered the island with a classical order very different from 
 the tension characteristic of most of his other work. Even 
 his trips to the Bahamas produced images of men battling 
 
 the forces of nature, culminating at the close of the nine- 
 teenth century in the heroic struggle of The Gulf Stream 
 (fig. 4). The paintings of Bermuda, however, construct a 
 landscape of balance and serenity with only a few sugges- 
 tions of movement. 
 
 Bom and raised in Boston, Homer began his training 
 in a lithography workshop there and earned freelance il- 
 lustration assignments for Balou's Pictorial Drawing-Room 
 Companion and Harper’s Weekly. A commission from 
 Harper's in 1862 to travel with the Union Army and send 
 back the first images of the Civil War set the stage for his 
 lifelong interest in human struggle, a subject that he ex- 
 plored with few interruptions except for the Bermuda vis- 
 its. Samuel Clemens’s quip that “Bermuda is heaven but 
 you have to go through hell to get there” probably char- 
 acterizes Homer’s experience of the island. 
 
 Homer’s first trip to Bermuda came at a pivotal mo- 
 ment in his career and at a universal moment of transi- 
 tion. The final year of the nineteenth century began on a 
 high note for him with the sale in February of Thomas 
 Clarke’s collection of his work, which set record-breaking 
 
 ■ I 
 
prices and enormously enhanced his reputation, and con- 
 cluded with the completion of The Gulf Stream in Decem- 
 ber. That monumental work was, as John Wilmerding 
 states, “an embodiment of the fin-de-siede mood of anxi- 
 ety, if not despair, felt by many in America and Europe in 
 these years.” Wilmerding goes on to characterize the pe- 
 riod as “an age of transition, as Homer’s near contempo- 
 rary Henry Adams was to articulate in his Education, 
 published in 1906, and Albert Einstein was to confirm 
 with his theory of relativity, announced about the same 
 time. Both art and science, by means of Picasso’s cubism, 
 the technology of the X ray, and the practice of psycho- 
 analysis, were about to dissect and penetrate the surface 
 of the visible world." At that pregnant moment, Homer 
 rewarded himself with a trip to Bermuda. 
 
 Sailing to the island for the first time on the S.S. 
 Trinidad, he arrived in Hamilton harbor on December 8, 
 1899 and stayed until January 22, 1900. The stark, almost 
 monochromatic washes of his painting, S.S. Trinidad, 
 Bermuda, record his voyage and presage the dramatic clar- 
 ity of vision and reductive organization he would bring to 
 his Bermuda works. He returned to the island in 1901, and 
 the two visits yielded nineteen known watercolor paintings 
 of beautiful vistas rendered in saturated jewel-like colors 
 applied in broad washes. The Bermuda watercolors mark 
 the pinnacle of Homer’s achievement in the medium, uni- 
 fying his mood of spontaneous joy expressed in brilliant 
 light and color with a resolved sense of order. On the island, 
 he painted, as Wilmerding concludes, “some of the most 
 free, lush, intimate, and subtle works of his maturity.” In 
 a 1902 letter to his dealer, Homer declared these paintings 
 to be “as good work... as I ever did.” Certainly they evi- 
 dence Homer’s positive frame of mind in Bermuda. 
 
 In Inland Water (no. 5) and Rocky Shore, Bermuda, 
 Homer tackled very different landscape situations but 
 arrived at peaceful resolutions in both cases. He painted 
 Inland Water on a calm winter’s day looking out to 
 Granaway Deep in the Great Sound from above Harbour 
 Road. The immediacy of the foreground plane and its 
 warm tonality set the stage for a series of dissolving 
 planes of bright, cool color moving into the distance and 
 upward on the surface. The simple geometry of the block- 
 like pink and yellow cottages contrasts with the insistent 
 horizontals of sea, outlying land, and sky, and the result is 
 perfect balance. With the absence of human activity, the 
 only movement is in Homer’s scumbled paint passages in 
 the foreground and blotting in the clouds. In Rocky Shore, 
 Bermuda, he caught the choppy tide as it strikes an out- 
 cropping of stratified rock along the open ocean shore- 
 line. The erosion process cut an arch in the rock, which 
 becomes an oval of light when the formation is reflected 
 in the surrounding water. The immediate foreground 
 plane of sand and dark foliage balances this moment of 
 drama. The action of the choppy waves near the shore is 
 resolved in the insistent horizontality of the sea. When 
 Homer was asked if he agreed that beauty is essentially 
 everywhere in nature, waiting to be seized by the artist, he 
 replied: “Yes, but the rare thing is to find a painter who 
 knows a good thing when he sees it. You must wait... pa- 
 tiently until the exceptional, the wonderful affect or aspect 
 comes.” Homer seems to have followed his own advice 
 in these paintings. 
 
 Other artists who came to Bermuda at the end of the 
 nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twenti- 
 eth century often followed stylistic trails that they had 
 blazed in other places. Frank Bicknell (1866-1943), for ex- 
 
ample, was part of the American Impressionist group, in- 
 cluding Childe Hassam, who usually spent their sum- 
 mers painting the sparkle of light on the countryside near 
 Old Lyme, Connecticut. Although he made his home in 
 Connecticut for forty years, Bicknell also yearned for the 
 romantic paradise and sailed to Japan, as La Farge and oth- 
 ers had done. Stopping in Bermuda in 1894 on his return 
 from the Far East, he painted Souvenir of Bermuda. Its 
 loosely brushed strokes of delicate color testify to his Im- 
 pressionist roots, while its simplified foreground plane 
 and strong horizontal orientation punctuated with selec- 
 tive vertical accents reveal the influence of prints he 
 would have seen during his visit to Japan. 
 
 Ross Sterling Turner (1847-1915) also joined Hassam’s 
 circle and vacationed at Celia Thaxter’s home on Apple- 
 dore Island in 1883, about the same time he began visit- 
 ing Bermuda. The short, choppy, and brightly colored 
 strokes of his watercolor and gouache painting, Fairy- 
 lands, Bermuda characterize his Impressionist rendering 
 of an idealized setting. At the same time, the subtly modu- 
 lated translucent planes of his Bermuda images are simi- 
 lar to Inness’s Tonalist approach. 
 
 Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912), as student and assistant 
 to the staunch realist Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania 
 Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, would seem to 
 have been an unlikely exponent of the idealized Bermuda 
 landscape. However, he and his friend and fellow artist 
 Edmund Greacen were also drawn to the Old Lyme Im- 
 pressionist group where they knew Bicknell. Anshutz had 
 met Greacen after that painter had returned from 
 Giverny. Anshutz succeeded Eakins as director of the 
 Pennsylvania Academy in 1909, and the following year he 
 and Greacen went to Bermuda. The loose brushwork and 
 
 saturated color of the Impressionists is apparent in An- 
 shutz’s oil painting, South Shore, Bermuda (no. 6). How- 
 ever, as with Homer’s Bermuda renderings, Anshutz 
 achieved an idealized monumentality by reducing his 
 composition to a few visual elements. The generalized 
 color masses of the foreground shoreline culminate in the 
 dark, spiky pines, whose trunks and branches seem to 
 point toward the placid horizon line that unifies the com- 
 position and declares the stability of the scene. 
 
 Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930) carried to Bermuda 
 the Impressionist focus on color and light he had devel- 
 oped as a student and assistant of William Merritt Chase. 
 After founding the Provincetown School of Art on Cape 
 Cod, Massachusetts, Hawthorne decided to establish a 
 winter art school in Bermuda in 1910. In landscapes such 
 as Early Morning, Bermuda, Hawthorne laid out a general- 
 ized view of sand, sea, and sky that transcends specific lo- 
 cation to render the totality of the idealized Bermuda 
 experience. As in Turner’s reductive Bermuda, Hawthorne 
 applied modulated watercolor washes across open hori- 
 zontal planes to construct an image that unites an Im- 
 pressionist sense of color and light with classical balance 
 and order. Hawthorne probably would have shared his 
 wife’s observation that, “The colors of the sound and the 
 sea are indescribable - all the varying shades of emer- 
 ald. ..cerulean and deep blues”. Of course, he went on to 
 describe precisely that visual experience. 
 
 E. Ambrose Webster (1869-1935) was Hawthorne’s 
 professional rival in Provincetown, where Webster also 
 directed a successful art school. However, unlike 
 Hawthorne, who continued to look to Impressionism for 
 inspiration, Webster trumpeted the radical experiments of 
 the European avant-garde painters. In Paris, he studied 
 
the geometric restructuring of reality with the Cubist 
 Albert Gleizes, and he saw color transformed in Fauve 
 painting. Perhaps at Anshutz’s suggestion, Webster vis- 
 ited Bermuda in 1912 and returned several times there- 
 after. The flattened planes and grid-like composition of 
 his Bermuda oil paintings, particularly Cactus (no. 7) and 
 Blue Aloe, clearly demonstrate his commitment to the 
 classical geometry of the Cubists, while the balance of 
 complementary colors indicates Fauve influence. 
 
 Declaring Webster to be "a luminarist of the most 
 modem order,” a contemporary critic writing in the 
 Boston Evening Transcript saw in his work the synthesis of 
 a stylistic legacy with the immediate experience of 
 Bermuda. The critic explained, “Not only the light but 
 the heart and color of the tropics are strikingly felt in his 
 canvases.” The Bermuda experience determined 
 Webster’s approach to composition and color in these 
 paintings. A radically reduced structure of flattened 
 shapes serves as a foil for the drama of light and shade 
 rendered primarily through the juxtaposition of yellow 
 and purple. "Several persons have asked me why, or then 
 when, I became so sure shadows in the sunlight are pur- 
 ple,” Webster explained in a 1919 interview. “I always 
 thought so, but was not positive until I went to Bermuda 
 where I now go every winter.” His interest in the expres- 
 sive possibilities of radically simplified form and color 
 made him an early champion of American Modernists 
 such as Marsden Hartley. 
 
 Webster and Hawthorne persuaded Houghton Cran- 
 ford Smith (1887-1983) to come to Bermuda to recuper- 
 ate from lead poisoning in 1912. He stayed with 
 Hawthorne and other friends from Provincetown, and he 
 painted with Webster. Initially under Hawthorne’s 
 
 influence, Smith used an Impressionist or Post-Impres- 
 sionist approach, but later gravitated to the greater struc- 
 tural refinement of modernist Purism, which he studied 
 firsthand with Le Corbusier in the early 1930s. In Apres le 
 Cubisme (After Cubism), published in 1918, Le Corbusier 
 and Amedee Ozenfant, presented Purism as a simplified, 
 more mechanistic sequel to Cubism. Their own paintings 
 of still life subjects were organized, as Gail Stavitsky ex- 
 plains, according to “strict, rational laws of composition 
 and form to convey a new world order”. Smith’s oil 
 paintings, Bermuda Houses by Water and House with Red 
 Amaryllis, Bermuda, testify to his transition from Impres- 
 sionist diffusion to the Purist call for “a return to the eter- 
 nal, classical principles of structure and form....” In the 
 aftermath of World War I and during the frenetic years of 
 the 1920s, many artists found this call to order appealing. 
 
 Just as painters had traveled from the United States to 
 Bermuda for artistic or therapeutic reasons, artists from 
 Canada also began to see the island as a site of renewal 
 and inspiration. John Lyman (1886-1960), founder of the 
 Contemporary Arts Society in Canada, first visited 
 Bermuda in 1912 before going to Paris in 1913. He re- 
 turned to the island the following year and various win- 
 ters afterward. The island offered a refuge when his art 
 was heavily criticized in Montreal and his marriage to a 
 French-Canadian Catholic was condemned in the city’s 
 social circles. The resulting strain caused Lyman’s eye- 
 sight to deteriorate, and the steely skies, dark ultramarine 
 water, and eerie foreground light of his painting, St. 
 George's, Bermuda (no. 8) may reflect his physical and 
 emotional difficulties. Yet, in spite of the strong contrast 
 of light and dark in this work, the clearly defined geomet- 
 ric shapes create an armature of balanced horizontals and 
 
verticals and a profoundly still atmosphere that reflects 
 the tranquility Lyman found in Bermuda. 
 
 Jack Bush (1909-1977) became Canada’s leading ab- 
 stract painter, and his Bermuda paintings combine his 
 formal sensibility with vivid realism to convey the charac- 
 ter of the island. House and Figure, St. George’s (no. 9) 
 depicts West Indians who landed in Bermuda on their 
 way north aboard banana boats that plied the waters 
 between the islands and U.S. ports. While Bush captures 
 the essence of the West Indian figures and the solidity of 
 the Bermuda architecture, he also transforms the image 
 into a play of powerful contrasts of color and pattern. 
 
 The foreground figure in primary red, blue, and yellow 
 is set against the modulated whites of the house, which, 
 in turn, stands brightly lit against an azure blue sky. The 
 feather-like palm fronds are lively counterpoints to the 
 strong geometry of the house. Bush and his wife came to 
 Bermuda for their honeymoon in 1934, a period that 
 marked the culmination of three decades during which 
 prominent American Modernists had been discovering 
 the island. 
 
 Traveling to Bermuda was an outgrowth of the rela- 
 tionships established among young American artists who, 
 in the first and second decades of the twentieth century, 
 were looking to the radical precedents of Cezanne, 
 Matisse, and Picasso as guides to new ways of construct- 
 ing visual experience. Painters such as Hartley, Charles 
 Demuth, and Georgia O’Keeffe gathered around the pho- 
 tographer and art impresario Alfred Stieglitz. At his 
 Gallery of the Photo-Secession, called “291” for its address 
 on Fifth Avenue, Stieglitz exhibited the work of these new 
 artists who became members of his circle. To encourage 
 the exploration of new avenues of visual expression, he 
 
 also presented exhibitions of recent European develop- 
 ments along with works from tribal Africa and Oceania. 
 Inspired by the possibilities for abstraction these works 
 suggested, members of the Stieglitz circle traveled to the 
 Maine coast, Nova Scotia, New Mexico, or other regions of 
 dramatic landscape to find the “essence and stark beauty” 
 of the juncture of land, sea, and sky. 
 
 Demuth (1883-1935) and Hartley were also regulars at 
 the home of Walter and Louise Arensberg, whose New 
 York apartment was the scene of exchanges between 
 American and French Modernists including the painters 
 Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Albert Gleizes, and the 
 poet William Carlos Williams. It was probably there that 
 in 1916 Demuth, Hartley, Gleizes, and Gleizes’s painter 
 friend, Louis Bouche, decided to journey to Bermuda. In 
 his painting, Les Bermudes, La Maison du Gouvemeur 
 (no. 10), Gleizes (1881-1953), transposed to the island the 
 Cubist vision that he had been championing since he and 
 his compatriot, Jean Metzinger, published Du Cubisme, 
 the definitive treatise on Cubism, in 1912. Gleizes did not 
 have to leave the Hamilton Hotel, where he, Bouche, De- 
 muth, and Hartley first stayed, to look toward the towers 
 of Government House and find inspiration for the classi- 
 cized and modernist landscape he wished to create. This 
 watercolor painting, which served as the basis of several 
 large oil paintings, advanced the drive to bring classical, 
 geometric order to nature. The framing verticals of trees, 
 the generalized arcs of foliage, and the cubic forms of 
 buildings recall the seventeenth-century Claudian for- 
 mula, here updated into a structure of flattened parallel 
 planes moving simultaneously upward on the surface and 
 deeper into space. The cool blue-green tonalities play off 
 the warm toned paper with an airy liveliness that con- 
 
trasts with the generally subdued coloration of Cubist 
 paintings. 
 
 Demuth’s trip to Bermuda in the winter of 1916 fur- 
 thered his goals of defining a structural form-language for 
 his art and establishing himself within the Modernist 
 avant-garde. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his early 
 education at Franklin and Marshall Academy led to a sci- 
 entific certificate, and his training at the Drexel Institute 
 in Philadelphia reinforced his developing interest in 
 structure and order. Through Anshutz, one of his teach- 
 ers at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Demuth 
 began to make contact with other Modernists in Philadel- 
 phia, including the writers William Carlos Williams, 
 Marianne Moore, and Ezra Pound. Two trips to Europe 
 and study at a Paris academy also expanded his horizons. 
 By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, 
 Demuth had achieved some recognition as a watercolorist 
 and a Modernist. 
 
 From 1912 to 1914, Demuth made his most important 
 trip to Europe, during which he attended the Academies 
 Julian, Moderne, and Colarossi, met Gertrude and Leo 
 Stein, traveled to Berlin with Hartley, painted on the 
 French coast at Etretat, and wrote a one-act play, The 
 Azure Adder. Returning to the United States shortly be- 
 fore war erupted in Europe, he spent the summer of 1914 
 in Provincetown, where he experimented with Cubist ab- 
 stractions under the influence of the nautical motifs 
 Hartley had been painting in Germany. Demuth also 
 worked with the Provincetown Players, where he met 
 Eugene O’Neill. Their continuing friendship is implied in 
 the playwright’s invention of Charlie Marsden, the lead- 
 ing character in O’Neill’s play, Strange Interlude, who is 
 almost certainly a composite of Charles Demuth and 
 
 Marsden Hartley. By the following fall, Demuth em- 
 barked on the most fruitful period of his career. He had 
 met Duchamp, Picabia, and Gleizes at the Arensberg’s 
 salon, and he had simplified his style under the evolving 
 influence of Purism, which the French artists advocated. 
 Excited by the possibilities of this new approach, Demuth 
 joined Hartley, Gleizes and Bouche in Bermuda to discuss 
 Cubism and other Modernist concepts. 
 
 Demuth’s Bermuda watercolor paintings certainly tes- 
 tify to Gleizes’s influence as he worked to clarify his vi- 
 sion of an ordered and avant-garde world. Abandoning his 
 earlier more sinuous forms and brighter Fauve color, 
 Demuth assimilated the Purist aesthetic in his Architec- 
 ture: Red Roof and Trees and Houses (no. n), in which 
 houses become transparent cubes and prisms and tree 
 trunks provide isolated serpentine elements in contrast to 
 the clarity of the ruler-drawn grid. Delicate translucent 
 washes, which capture the pastel hues of Bermuda’s ver- 
 nacular architecture, shimmer against this structure. 
 Using a blotting technique to make fine tonal gradations 
 and mottled textures, Demuth allowed the paint to dis- 
 solve into the surface of the paper in order to create a play 
 of space against the flatness of the shapes. Defying gravity 
 even more than Gleizes’s structures do, Demuth’s build- 
 ings seem to float peacefully like a mirage suspended 
 above the earth. 
 
 These paintings mark a watershed in Demuth’s devel- 
 opment and crystallize the style that would be called Pre- 
 cisionism. Demuth’s Bermuda works served as a guide as 
 Precisionism developed in America “within the interna- 
 tional context of the classicizing, constructive machine 
 age ‘call to order’ movements,” that, Gail Stavitsky ob- 
 serves, “evolvjed] after the chaos and destruction of World 
 
 23 
 
War I.” Yet, in its clarity and order, as well as its re- 
 sponse to the horrors of war, Precisionism also is linked 
 to earlier American interpretations of landscape, particu- 
 larly Luminism. Defining Demuth’s approach as a 
 “method almost scientific in its precision,” the critic 
 Forbes Watson extolled “its refinement, its reticence, its 
 disdain of all that is heavy-handed” and concluded that 
 Demuth was a quintessentially American Modernist 
 “in tune with everything that has hitherto been finest in 
 American art.” Along with Demuth, Niles Spencer 
 (1893-1952) and George Ault (1891-1948) applied the 
 Precisionist approach to their own experiences in 
 Bermuda. 
 
 Ault visited the island in 1922, and the quiet beauty of 
 the numerous monotypes, watercolors, and pencil draw- 
 ings he created there suggest that he enjoyed a brief pe- 
 riod of serenity in an otherwise unhappy life. In his 
 watercolor, A Street in St. George’s (no. 12), for example, he 
 reduced the stucco walls of the vernacular architecture of 
 the town to a play of clearly defined, flat, orange and violet 
 planes that simultaneously recede toward a golden light. 
 In his Bermuda landscapes, Ault added poetic color and 
 light to the geometric structure and emotional reserve 
 that typify Precisionism. 
 
 When he visited the island in 1927, Spencer saw 
 Bermuda’s vernacular architecture as part of its peaceful 
 atmosphere. The clustered masses of houses that fill the 
 space of Spencer’s oil painting, House, Bermuda (St. 
 George’s) (no. 13), reduce the natural environment to a 
 generalized mass of dark green foliage in the background. 
 The houses manifest the human presence in Bermuda, 
 and their simple geometry speaks of the harmony that 
 Spencer observed. As with Cezanne, Spencer found 
 
 geometry everywhere. The critic Henry McBride charac- 
 terized him as “one of those who sees cubism in na- 
 ture,” and Spencer’s art is also classical in spirit. “In 
 esthetic and technique the context of Spencer’s art is 
 cubism,” Holger Cahill noted, “but the personal quality, 
 the dignity, the distance, and precision are those of the 
 classic.” Spencer’s and Ault’s classical Precisionist 
 rendering of Bermudan spaces and structures contrast 
 with Georgia O’Keeffe’s more organic and naturalistic re- 
 sponse to the island. 
 
 Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) came to Bermuda in 
 March 1933 seeking refuge from the stress of her profes- 
 sional and personal life. The failure of her project to paint 
 a mural in Radio City Music Hall and difficulties in her 
 marriage to Alfred Stieglitz in late 1932 led to physical 
 and emotional symptoms: constricted breathing, loss of 
 appetite, inability to walk or sleep. After spending two 
 months in treatment for “psycho-neurosis” at Doctor’s 
 Hospital in New York in February and March 1933, she 
 left immediately for Bermuda. As she wrote to her friend 
 Rebecca Strand, wife of the photographer Paul Strand, “a 
 place where the sun shines and it is warm - where no one 
 will ask me how I feel and no one I know will be around 
 seems very good to think of.” The following month, she 
 again wrote to Strand, “It is all curiously quiet and easy 
 moving... the household like the weather... like the 
 islands... it all seems a bit unreal.” She observed much but 
 could do no work. “It is warm and slow and the sea such 
 a lovely clear greenish blue,” she told Strand. “I have done 
 little but sit - but the sitting is good.” 
 
 By May, she felt strong enough to return to New York, 
 but in February 1934, the northern winter weather and 
 loneliness brought her back to Bermuda. She stayed with 
 
friends in a house called the Parapet on Scaur Hill, Som- 
 erset, next door to the house Winslow Homer probably oc- 
 cupied thirty-three years earlier. Bermuda is “warm and 
 soft and lovely,” she wrote to her friend Jean Toomer, “and 
 there is no one about who connects at all with the New 
 York life... and the ocean is in between.” After an eighteen- 
 month hiatus, she began to work again. “I’ve been draw- 
 ing a little,” she explained to Toomer. “It all seems much 
 more beautiful than I thought it last year... I can lie here 
 or sit... and look out at the water over the tops of cedar 
 trees... all really very good.” 2 
 
 In this therapeutic atmosphere, O’Keeffe produced 
 eleven drawings, including Banyan Tree Trunk, Bermuda 
 (no. 2 1 ) . This East Indian transplant to the island spreads 
 branches like new shoots over large areas of the ground. 
 However, O’Keeffe focused on the heart of the tree, where 
 its massive branches spring from a complex core. She was 
 more interested in the essence of the tree, which she 
 defined in a few monumental cylindrical forms described 
 with delicate pencil shading. These drawings have a dig- 
 nity and austerity that would also inform O’Keeffe’s later 
 images of the New Mexican landscape. 
 
 Unlike his friends, Gleizes and Demuth, Marsden 
 Hartley (1877-1943) did not travel to Bermuda in the win- 
 ter of 1916 simply to get away from the generally hectic 
 wartime environment of New York. For Hartley, the island 
 offered the possibility of companionship and stability in a 
 time of total emotional dislocation. Between 1910 and 
 1915, he had been productive and happy living in Europe, 
 particularly in Germany where he met artists such as 
 Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc and where his increas- 
 ingly abstract paintings were received positively. However, 
 by the winter of 1915, his friend Karl von Freiburg had 
 
 been killed in battle, and food shortages forced him to 
 leave Germany. “For all the suffering he had witnessed in 
 Berlin,” Barbara Haskell explains, “the city had given him 
 the home and security he had always lacked. His forced 
 withdrawal from this congenial atmosphere left him feel- 
 ing psychologically orphaned.... Not only was he separated 
 from his closest friends, but he now found himself in an 
 environment where these very friends were regarded as 
 the enemy.” In the polarized wartime atmosphere of 
 New York City, even the music of Beethoven and Mozart 
 was banned. 
 
 While Hartley struggled to find place for himself in his 
 native land, his artist friends offered him the possibility of 
 renewal. In the summer of 1916, the writer John Reed in- 
 vited Hartley to join him in Provincetown. Reed’s other 
 guests included Leo Stein, William and Marguerite Zo- 
 rach, Eugene O’Neill, Demuth, and Carl Sprinchom, who 
 would later become one of Hartley’s closest friends. In the 
 calm atmosphere of outer Cape Cod, Hartley abandoned 
 the Expressionist symbolism of his German period and, 
 under the influence of Synthetic Cubism, focused on the 
 formal issues of compositions reduced to unified, geo- 
 metric shapes in muted colors. After Reed closed his 
 house, Hartley and Demuth remained in Provincetown 
 living in a rent-free house they found. The plan to go to 
 Bermuda that winter offered Hartley an opportunity to 
 prolong the pleasure of camaraderie and to continue his 
 effort to refine his new reductive, formal approach. “I 
 want my work in both writing and painting,” he wrote to 
 Sprinchorn in the winter of 1917, “to have that special 
 coolness for I weary of emotional excitement in art....” 
 Under the influence of Demuth and Gleizes in Bermuda, 
 Hartley’s desire to find stability in retreat was manifested 
 
in spare still-life compositions of interior spaces. 
 
 For Hartley, the 1930s were in many ways a reprise of 
 the events of 1916, as Europe moved steadily to repeat the 
 history of World War I. He had returned to Europe in 
 1920 and had remained there until early 1934 when the 
 financial crisis of the worldwide Depression forced him 
 back to the United States. He joined the Public Works of 
 Art Project grateful for the $55 weekly salary it offered. 
 When that program was discontinued in May 1934 and 
 his paintings were not sold, his always-precarious per- 
 sonal finances reached the crisis stage. Stieglitz, who had 
 exhibited his work and had often advanced him money, 
 declined to help, and a Guggenheim fellowship Hartley 
 had received was not renewed. To add insult to injury, 
 many friends rejected him because they viewed his stay in 
 Germany as an indication of support for the National So- 
 cialist regime. “All I want is to live modestly without ter- 
 ror of hunger,” he protested to his friend Louis Shapiro, 
 “and I can go on and produce quietly....” In this atmos- 
 phere of alienation and despair, Hartley destroyed the 
 paintings he could no longer afford to store. Desperate to 
 leave New York, he planned to escape to New England by 
 summer, but his doctor forbade him to go north because 
 persistent bronchitis was sapping his strength. 
 
 The idea of Bermuda as a place of salvation began to 
 take shape in Hartley’s mind. The sale of a painting to his 
 nephew, Theodore Newell, as well as a monthly stipend of 
 $50 from an “angel”, made the prospect a reality. In June, 
 he made the three-day voyage to the island where, as he 
 explained in a letter to Rebecca Strand, he could live as 
 one of “the elegant poor”. He took a room for $15 a 
 month in the north shore home of Elmo Petty, a local 
 plumber. On weekends, Petty went out to the coral reefs 
 to fish. Hartley went along and discovered shoals of bril- 
 liantly colored sea creatures. His oil painting, Sunken 
 Treasure (no. 14), is Hartley’s record of this remarkable 
 discovery. In this image, the fish and the coral in shim- 
 mering primary colors take on a magical presence that 
 transcends specific time or place. The viewer simultane- 
 ously looks down into the water and at the creatures float- 
 ing in space. Their simplified, flattened forms and 
 decorative organization become emblematic of a place 
 where the experience of nature is at once reassuring and 
 transformative. Hartley had found in his sojourn in 
 Bermuda the treasure that American artists had been 
 seeking since Thomas Doughty sailed to Mount Desert 
 Island - a projection in nature of his own hope for the 
 elusive perfect world. 
 
ENDNOTES 
 
 Quoted in Patricia Cainan, The 
 Masterworks Bermudiana Collection 
 (Hamilton, Bermuda: The Bermudian 
 Publishing Co. Ltd., 1994), p. 28. 
 
 Quoted in Kynaton McShine (ed.) , 
 
 "Toward the Abstract Sublime,” in 
 Kynaston McShine (ed.), The Natural 
 Paradise: Painting in America 7800-7950 
 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1976), 
 p. 109. 
 
 John Wilmerding, American Views: Essays 
 on American Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 
 University Press, 1991), p. 85. 
 
 4 
 
 Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., "American 
 Landscape,” in Marilyn S. Kushner, et al., 
 Three Hundred Years of Painting: The 
 Montclair Art Museum Collection (New 
 York: Hudson Hills Press and the 
 Montclair Art Museum, 1989), p. 27. 
 
 Wilmerding, American Views, p. 3. 
 
 6 Cikovsky, "American Landscape," p. 29 
 
 Albert Boime, The Magisterial Caze : 
 Manifest Destiny and American Landscape 
 Painting (Washington, DC and London: 
 Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), p. 5. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature" [1836] in 
 The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. II. 
 Nature, Addresses and Lectures 
 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1903-1904), 
 pp. 7-8. Quoted in Susan Faxon, Point of 
 View: Landscapes from the Addison 
 Collection (Andover, MA: Addison Gallery 
 of American Art, 1992), p. 9. 
 
 9 
 
 Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: 
 American Landscape Painting 1825-18/5 
 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University 
 Press, 1995), p. 273. 
 
 Thomas Cole, "Essay on American 
 Scenery” [1835], The American Monthly 
 Magazine, New Series 1 (January 1836), 
 p. 5. Quoted in Barbara Novak (editor and 
 introduction), "On Divers Themes from 
 Nature,” in McShine, The Natural Paradise, 
 pp. 61-62. 
 
 William Cullen Bryant, Poetical Works 
 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 
 1897), p. 64. 
 
 12 Thomas Cole, letter to Luman Reed, 
 
 March 6, 1836 (Cole Papers). Quoted in 
 Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, "The Exaltation 
 of American Landscape Painting,” in John 
 K. Howat, et al., American Paradise: The 
 World of the Hudson River School (New 
 York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and 
 Harry Abrams, 1987), p. 128. 
 
 Thomas Cole, Thomas Cole's Poetry. Edited 
 by Marshall B. Tynn (York, PA: Liberty Cap 
 Books, 1972), p. 103. Quoted in Novak, 
 Nature and Culture, p. 157. 
 
 1 Faxon, Point of View, p. 29. 
 
 Jasper Cropsey, “Up among the Clouds,” 
 The Crayon (New York) vol. 2, no. 6 
 (August 8, 1855), p. 79. Quoted in Novak 
 in McShine, The Natural Paradise, p. 89. 
 
6 Asher B. Durand, "Letters,” The Crayon 
 (New York) vol. 1, no. to (Janua7 3, 1855), 
 p. 2. Quoted in Cikovsky, "American 
 Landscapes,” p. 32. 
 
 Barbara Ball Buff, catalogue note, in 
 Howat, American Paradise, p. 143. 
 
 1 8 
 
 J Unidentified newspaper clipping. Quoted 
 in Rebecca Bedell, The Anatomy of Nature: 
 Geology and American Landscape Painting, 
 1825-1875 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 
 University Press, 2001), p. 87. 
 
 1 9 
 
 Carol Tryon, catalogue note, in Howat, 
 American Paradise, pp. 149-150. 
 
 Henry David Thoreau, entry, December 15, 
 1838 .Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Edited 
 by Carl Bode (New York: Signet, 1967), 
 p. 34. Quoted in Novak, Nature and 
 Culture, p. 150. 
 
 “Domestic Art Gossip," The Crayon (New 
 York) vol. 7, no. 12 (December i860), 
 p. 353. Quoted in Pamela J. Belanger, 
 Inventing Arcadia: Artists and Tourists at 
 Mount Desert (Rockland, ME: Farnsworth 
 Art Museum, 1999), p. 98. 
 
 Faxon, Point of Vie w, p. 20. 
 
 See Novak, Nature and Culture, p. 28. 
 
 Belanger, Inventing Arcadia, p. 101. 
 
 Sanford Gifford, 1877. Quoted in Nicolai 
 Cikovsky, Sanford Robinson Gifford, 
 
 1 823-1880 (Austin: University ofTexas Art 
 Museum, 1970), p. 16. 
 
 ’ Samuel Clemens, The Adventures of 
 Huckleberry Finn (1884] (New York: Crown 
 Publishers, 1981), p. 96. 
 
 John Wilmerding, “The Luminist 
 Movement: Some Reflections,” in John 
 Wilmerding et a!., American Light: The 
 Luminist Movement 1850-1875 
 (Washington, DC and New York: National 
 Gallery of Art and Harper & Row, 1980), 
 
 P '46. 
 
 2g 
 
 The Sign of Promise [1863]. Quoted in 
 Cikovsky, "American Landscapes,” p. 34. 
 See also Gail Stavitsky, “Introduction,” in 
 Gail Stavitsky et al., George Inness: Presence 
 of the Unseen (Montclair, Nj: Montclair 
 Art Museum, 1994), p. 9. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, "Hours of 
 Exaltation,” (1857). Quoted in Peter 
 Bermingham, American Art in the Barbizon 
 Mood (Washington, DC: National 
 Collection of Fine Arts, 1975), p. 29. 
 
 Bermingham, American Art, p. 48. 
 
 George Inness Jr., Life, Art, and Letters of 
 George Inness [1917] (New York: DaCapo 
 Press, 1969), p. 218. 
 
 George Inness, Exaltation, in George 
 Inness Jr., Life, Art, and Letters, p. 97. 
 
 Linda Merrill, An Ideal Country: Paintings 
 by Dwight William Tryon in the Freer Gallery 
 of Art (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of 
 Art, 1990), p. 31. 
 
 E.L. Godkin, editorial comment, The 
 Nation (1866). Quoted in Samuel P. Hays, 
 Response to Industrialism : 1885-1914 
 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 
 
 1 957) . P- 25- 
 
 Hays, Response to Industrialism, p. 24. 
 
 Hays, Response to Industrialism, pp. 41-42. 
 Looking Backward was the most widely 
 read Utopian novel, selling 400,000 
 copies. It argued that humanity was inher- 
 ently good and peaceful, not competitive 
 and greedy, and that the environment 
 could thwart or nurture noble instincts. 
 
 John La Farge, An Artist's Letters from 
 Japan (New York: Century, 1897), p. 1. 
 
 La Farge, An Artist’s Letters, pp. 88-89. 
 
 39 
 
 H. Barbara Weinberg, Doreen Bolger, 
 
 David Park Curry, American Impressionism 
 and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 
 1885-1915 (New York: Metropolitan 
 Museum of Art and Harry Abrams, Inc., 
 1994), p. 92. 
 
 Calnan, Masterworks, p. 13. 
 
 Calnan, Masterworks, p. 13. 
 
 Quoted in Calnan, Masterworks, p. 14. 
 
 Helen A. Cooper, Winslow Homer 
 Watercolors (Washington, DC and New 
 Haven, CT: National Gallery of Art and Yale 
 University Press, 1986), pp. 13-14. 
 
 Quoted in Calnan, Masterworks, p. 13. 
 
 Donelson F. Hoopes, Winslow Homer 
 Watercolors (New York: Watson - Guptill 
 Publishers, 1969), pp. 56-57. 
 
 John Wilmerding, "Winslow Homer's 
 Maine,” in American Views, p. 44. 
 
 Cooper, Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 218. 
 
 Wilmerding, "Winslow Homer’s Maine,” 
 
 P- 39- 
 
49 
 
 Winslow Homer, letter to O'Brien and Son, 
 Chicago, 1902 (Goodrich / Whitney 
 Museum Record). Quoted in Cooper, 
 Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 226. 
 
 50 Quoted in Hoopes, Winslow Homer 
 Watercolors, p. 62. 
 
 1 Calnan, Masterworks, p. 36. 
 
 52 
 
 ' Mrs. Hawthorne, diary entry, 1910. Quoted 
 in Calnan, Masterworks, p. 39. 
 
 ' 3 "Four Boston Painters," Boston Evening 
 Transcript, January 8, 1913. Quoted in The 
 Next Decade: The Masterworks Bermudiana 
 Collection (Hamilton, Bermuda: The 
 Bermuda National Gallery, 1997), p. 17. 
 
 54 
 
 E. Ambrose Webster, interview, Detroit 
 Sunday News, November 2, 1919. Quoted 
 in From Bermuda Palms to Northern Pines: 
 Two Centuries of Art Inspired by Bermuda 
 (Toronto: University oFToronto Art Center, 
 2001), p. 8. 
 
 Gail Stavitsky, "Reordering Reality: 
 Precisionist Directions in American Art, 
 1915-1941,” in Precisionism in America 
 7975-1947; Reordering Reality (Montclair, 
 
 NJ: Harry N. Abrams and the Montclair 
 Art Museum, 1995), p. 15. 
 
 Stavitsky, “Reordering Reality," p. 15. 
 
 From Bermuda Palms to Northern Pines, p. j 
 
 " J Faxon, Point of View, p. 92. 
 
 5 9 
 
 “ Stavitsky, “Reordering Reality,” p. 12. 
 
 " Alvard L. Eiseman, Charles Demuth (New 
 York: Watson-Guptil Publications, 1982), 
 pp. 6-7. 
 
 Eiseman, Charles Demuth, pp. 6-7. 
 
 “Calnan, Masterworks, p. 26. O'Neill may 
 have joined Demuth and Hartley in 
 Bermuda in 1916, and ten years later he 
 purchased a large eighteenth-century 
 house on the island's Harbour Road. 
 
 Eiseman, Charles Demuth, p. 13. 
 
 'See Barbara Haskell, Charles Demuth 
 (New York: Harry Abrams, 1988), 
 pp. 121-141. 
 
 ’ Stavitsky, "Reordering Reality,” p. 15. 
 
 3 Forbes Watson, “American Note in 
 Demuth's Art," The World, December 2, 
 1923, p. 8. Quoted in Stavitsky, “Reordering 
 Reality,” p. 18. 
 
 7 Henry McBride, "Joseph Stella’s Startling 
 Art,” The Sun, April n, 1925, p. 9. Quoted 
 in Stavitsky, "Reordering Reality," pp. 18-19. 
 
 68 
 
 “ Holger Cahill, "Niles Spencer," Magazine 
 of Art, vol. 45, November 1952. Quoted in 
 Stavitsky, "Reordering Reality," p. 32. 
 
 Georgia O'Keeffe, letter to Rebecca Strand, 
 March 1933. Collection of American 
 Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and 
 Manuscript Library, Yale University. Quoted 
 in Georgia O’Keeffe - The Bermuda Respite 
 (Hamilton, Bermuda: The Masterworks 
 Foundation, 1994), p. 13. 
 
 Georgia O'Keeffe, letter to Rebecca Strand, 
 April 1933. Collection of American 
 Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and 
 Manuscript Library, Yale University. Quoted 
 in Calnan, Masterworks, p. 41. 
 
 Calnan, Masterworks, p. 41. 
 
 72 
 
 “ Georgia O'Keeffe, letter to Jean Toomer, 
 1934. Collection of American Literature, 
 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript 
 Library, Yale University. Quoted in Georgia 
 O'Keeffe - Bermuda Respite, p. 19. 
 
 3 Barbara Haskell, Marsden Hartley (New 
 York: Whitney Museum of American Art 
 and New York University Press, 1980), 
 p. 52. 
 
 Haskell, Marsden Hartley, pp. 54-55. 
 
 Marsden Hartley, letter to Carl Sprinchorn, 
 winter 1917, Archives of American Art. 
 Quoted in Haskell, Marsden Hartley, p. 56. 
 
 6 Marsden Hartley, letter to Louis Shapiro, 
 January 2, 1935, Archives of American Art. 
 Quoted in Haskell, Marsden Hartley, p. 97. 
 
 Marsden Hartley, letter to Rebecca Strand, 
 July 29, 1935, Archives of American Art. 
 Quoted in Haskell, Marsden Hartley, 
 
 PP 97-98- 
 
PLATES 
 
 No. l 
 
 Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) 
 
 Hudson River near 
 
 West Point, c. 1835 
 
 Oil on board. 8.5 x 11.875 ' n - 
 
 The Montclair Art 
 
 Museum, 1959.2 
 
 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. 
 
 John C Cattus 
 
32 
 
 No. 2 
 
 Sanford Gifford (1823-1880) 
 Lake Scene — Mountain 
 Background, 1867 
 Oil on canvas, 5.75 x 10.375 in. 
 Addison Gallery of American 
 Art, Phillips Academy, 
 Andover, Massachusetts 
 Bequest of Candace C. Stimson 
 

 No. 3 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 Sunset Clow, 1883 
 Oil on paper mounted on 
 board, 16 x 24.125 in. 
 
 The Montclair Art 
 Museum, 1946.1 
 Gift of Francis M. Weld 
 

 No. 4 
 
 F Ch Ide F i assam (iSsg-idis) 
 
 fig C . ■■ A : i , ft’, luoi 
 
 O' I on can . as ae - . tas n 
 Add son Ga Pivot Ament an 
 
 Aft, Phil c A oadem . . i 
 
 Ar ! ivc Via .sachusetts 
 C'li of ant inymi ms dt mor 
 
35 
 
 No. 5 
 
 Winslow Homer (1836-1910) 
 Inland Waters, 1901 
 Watercolor on paper, 
 13.75x21 in. 
 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
No. 6 
 
 Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912) 
 View of Bermuda, 
 South Shore, 1911 
 Oil on canvas, 7.375 x 9.5 in. 
 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 36 
 
37 
 
 No. 7 
 
 E. Ambrose Webster 
 (1869-1935) 
 
 Cactus, 1915 
 
 Oil on canvas, 19.5 x 23.75 in. 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
3 » 
 
 No. 8 
 
 John Lyman (1886-1960) 
 Si. George's, Bermuda, c. 1920 
 Oil on canvas, 10.2 x 27.75 in- 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
No. 9 
 
 Jack Bush (1909-1977) 
 House and Figure, 
 
 St. George's, 1939 
 Watercolor and pencil on 
 paper, 18.5 x 24 in. 
 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 39 
 
40 
 
 No. 10 
 
 Albert Gleizes (1881-1953) 
 Les Bermudes, La Maison 
 du Couverneur, 1917 
 Watercolor on paper. 
 10.25 x 8 in 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 
4 * 
 
 No. n 
 
 Charles Demuth (1883-1935) 
 Architecture: Red Roof, 1917 
 Watercolor and pencil on 
 paper, 11.75 x 17.75 in - 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation. Bermuda 
 
No. 12 
 
 George Ault (1891-1948) 
 A Street in St. George's, 1922 
 Watercolor and pencil on 
 paper, 15 x 16.75 m 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 42 
 
No. 13 
 
 Niles Spencer (1893-1952) 
 House, Bermuda 
 (St. George's), 1929 
 Oil on board, 13 x 16 in. 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
No. 14 
 
 Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) 
 Sunken Treasure, 1935 
 Oil on board, 18 x 24 in. 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 
No. 15 
 
 )ohn Casilear (1811-1893) 
 Hudson River Scene, c. 1850 
 Oil on board, 9x 12.5 in. 
 Collection of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Alec H. Petro 
 
 45 
 

 46 
 
 No. 16 
 
 Benjamin Champney 
 
 (1817-1907) 
 
 Mote Mountain from 
 Walker's Pond, 1878 
 Oil on canvas, 33 x 28 in. 
 Private Collection — 
 Boston College Alum 
 
47 
 
 No. 17 
 
 George Loring Brown 
 (1814- 1889) 
 
 View of Norwalk Islands, 
 Norwalk, Connecticut, 1864 
 Oil on canvas, 21.25 x 43.25 in. 
 Addison Gallery of American 
 Art, Phillips Academy, 
 Andover. Massachusetts 
 
4 8 
 
 No. i8 
 
 Martin Johnson Heade 
 (1819-1904) 
 Sailing by Moonlight, c. 
 
 1870-1875 
 Oil on canvas, 14.25 x 22.25 in - 
 Private Collection 
 
5 ° 
 
 No. 20 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 Medfeld Landscape, c. 1862 
 Oil on paper mounted 
 on board. 10,25 x 14.5 in. 
 Collection of Mark L. Brock 
 
No. 21 
 
 Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) 
 Banyan Tree Trunk, 
 
 Bermuda, 1934 
 Pencil on paper, 
 
 21.5 x 14.75 in. 
 
 The Masterworks 
 Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 51 
 
LIST OF WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION 
 
 Thomas Doughty (1793—1856) 
 
 Hudson River near West Point, c. 1835 
 Oil on board, 8.5 x 11.875 ' n - 
 The Montclair Art Museum, 1959.2 
 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John C. Cattus 
 
 Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) 
 
 In the Catskills, 1836 
 
 Oil on canvas, 30.25 x 42.25 in. 
 
 Addison Gallery of American Art 
 Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts 
 
 Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900) 
 
 Landscape, 1875 
 
 Oil on canvas, 14.25 x 24.25 in. 
 
 The Montclair Art Museum, 1961.3 
 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Golt 
 
 John Casilear (1811-1893) 
 
 Hudson River Scene, c. 1850 
 Oil on board, 9 x 12.5 in. 
 
 Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Alec H. Petro 
 
 Hiram Torrey (1820-1900) 
 
 Sunrise Among the Mountains, c. 1857 
 Oil on canvas, 34.25 x 51.2 in. 
 
 McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 
 Gift of Mr. Thomas J. Murphy, in memory of 
 his father 
 
 Benjamin Champney (1817-1907) 
 
 Mote Mountain from Walker's Pond, 1878 
 Oil on canvas, 33 x 28 in. 
 
 Private Collection — Boston College Alum 
 
 George Loring Brown (1814- 1889) 
 
 View of Norwalk Islands, Norwalk, 
 
 Connecticut, 1864 
 
 Oil on canvas, 21.25 x 43.25 in. 
 
 Addison Gallery of American Art 
 Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts 
 
 Sanford Gifford (1823-1880) 
 
 Lake Scene — Mountain Background, 1867 
 Oil on canvas, 5.75 x 10.375 in. 
 
 Addison Gallery of American Art 
 Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts 
 Bequest of Candace C. Stimson 
 
 Elihu Vedder (1836-1923) 
 
 Peasant Cirl Spinning, c. 1867 
 Oil on canvas, 11.5 x 13.5 in. 
 
 McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 
 
 John Enneking (1841-1916) 
 
 Mountain Stream, 1876 
 
 Oil on canvas, 22.25 x 14-125 in. 
 
 McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 
 
 Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) 
 
 Sailing by Moonlight, c. 1870-1875 
 Oil on canvas, 14.25 x 22.25 ' n - 
 Private Collection 
 
 Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) 
 
 Low Clouds over a Marsh, c. 1895-1904 
 Oil on canvas, 4.75 x 8.5 in. 
 
 Private Collection 
 
 James Hart (1808-1901) 
 
 Pasture in Early Evening, 1880 
 Oil on canvas mounted on board, 
 
 18.25 x 30.25 in - 
 
 McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 
 
Thomas Moran (1837-1926) 
 
 On the St.John's River, Florida, 1881 
 Oil on canvas, 10x16 in. 
 
 Private Collection 
 
 William Sonntag (1822-1900) 
 
 Camping by the Pond, c. 1886 
 Oil on canvas, 12.125 x 20 in- 
 McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 
 Medfeld Landscape, c. 1862 
 
 Oil on paper mounted on board, 10.25 x M -5 m 
 
 Collection of Mark L. Brock 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 
 Summer Landscape, c. 1864 
 Oil on board, 8x16 in. 
 
 Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Alec H. Petro 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 
 Autumn Landscape, c. 1870 
 Oil on canvas, 12 x 20 in. 
 
 Private Collection — Boston College Alum 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 
 Old Aqueduct, Campagna, Rome, 1871 
 Oil on paper mounted on board, 8.75 x 13 in. 
 The Montclair Art Museum, 1953.38 
 Gift of Mrs. Eugene G. Kraetzer, )r. 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 
 Sunset Clour, 1883 
 
 Oil on paper mounted on board, 16 x 24.125 in 
 The Montclair Art Museum, 1946.1 
 Gift of Francis M. Weld 
 
 George Inness (1825-1894) 
 
 Late Afternoon, c. 1884 
 Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. 
 
 Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Alec H. Petro 
 
 Dwight Tryon (1849-1925) 
 
 Twilight at Auvers, 1878 
 Oil on canvas, 20.25 x 3 ° ' n - 
 The Montclair Art Museum, 1915.43 
 Gift of William T. Evans 
 
 Charles Knapp (1822-1900) 
 
 Landscape with Water, Trees, and Mountains 
 Oil on canvas, 19 x 35 in. 
 
 McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 
 Gift of George Pearce Leyland 
 and Mary Cahill Leyland, in memory 
 of Kenneth Leyland 
 
 John La Farge (1835-1910) 
 
 Landscape in Nikko, 1887 
 Oil on canvas, 13.75 x 10.25 in 
 The Montclair Art Museum, 1976.22 
 Ethel Parsons Hunter Fund 
 
 F. Childe Hassam (1859-1935) 
 
 Morning Calm, Appledore, 1901 
 Oil on canvas, 26 x 24.125 in. 
 
 Addison Gallery of American Art 
 Phillips Academy, Andover Massachusetts 
 Gift of anonymous donor 
 
 Winslow Homer (1836-1910) 
 
 Rocky Shore, Bermuda, 1900 
 Watercolor on paper, 14 x 21 in. 
 
 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
 Bequest of Grenville H. Norcross 
 
 Winslow Homer (1836-1910) 
 
 S.S. Trinidad, Bermuda, 1901 
 Watercolor on paper, 14 x 21 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Winslow Homer (1836-1910) 
 
 Inland Waters, 1901 
 Watercolor on paper, 13.75 x 21 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Frank Alfred Bicknell (1866-1943) 
 
 Souvenir of Bermuda, 1894 
 Watercolor on paper, 5.125 x 9.5 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Evelyn Bicknell (1857-1936) 
 
 Hamilton, c. 1914 
 
 Watercolor on paper, 8.5 x 14.125 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Ross Sterling Turner (1847-1915) 
 
 Fairylands, Bermuda, 1890 
 
 Watercolor and gouache on paper, 18 x 15.5 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Ross Sterling Turner (1847-1915) 
 
 Bermuda, 1894 
 
 Watercolor and gouache on paper, 11.5 x 18 in. 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Prosper Senat (1852-1925) 
 
 On Paget Drive, c. 1921 
 Oil on canvas, 23.25 x 36.25 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Prosper Senat (1852-1925) 
 
 Pilot Boats, St. George's, Bermuda 
 Oil on board, 14.5 x 9.5 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912) 
 
 View of Bermuda, South Shore, 1911 
 Oil on canvas, 7.375 x 9.5 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930) 
 
 Early Morning, Bermuda, 1928 
 Watercolor on paper, 13.75 x 20 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 
 
 
E. Ambrose Webster (1869-1935) 
 
 Cactus, 1915 
 
 Oil on canvas, 19.5 x 23.75 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 E. Ambrose Webster (1869-1935) 
 
 Blue Aloe, 1916 
 
 Oil on canvas, 19.25 x 23.5 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Houghton Cranford Smith {1887-1983) 
 Bermuda Houses by Water, 1912 
 Oil on canvas, 14 x 16 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Houghton Cranford Smith (1887-1983) 
 House with Red Amaryllis, Bermuda, 1929 
 Oil on canvas, 14.75 x 20 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Carl Sprinchorn 
 Bermuda Beach, 1929 
 Watercolor on paper, 15 x 22.25 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 John Lyman (1886-1960) 
 
 St. George's, Bermuda, c. 1920 
 
 Oil on canvas, 10.2 x 27.75 ' n - 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 John Lyman (1886-1960) 
 
 Bermuda Landscape, c. 1930 
 Oil on canvas, 16 x 24 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Jack Bush (1909-1977) 
 
 Bermuda, Fort St. Catherine, 1934 
 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 7.75 x 9.25 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Jack Bush (1909-1977) 
 
 Old Maid's Lane, 1934 
 
 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 8.2 x 7.25 in. 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Jack Bush (1909-1977) 
 
 House and Figure, St. George's, 1939 
 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 18.5 x 24 in. 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Albert Cleizes (1881-1953) 
 
 Les Bermudes, La Maison du Gouverneur, 1917 
 Watercolor on paper, 10.25 x 8 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Albert Cleizes (1881-1953) 
 
 Les Bermudes, La Maison du Gouverneur II, 1917 
 Watercolor on paper, 10.25 * 8 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Charles Demuth (1883-1935) 
 
 Architecture: Red Roof, 1917 
 
 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 11.75 x 17-75 ' n 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Charles Demuth (1883-1935) 
 
 Trees and Houses, 1917 
 
 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 9.75 x 13.5 in. 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 George Ault (1891-1948) 
 
 A Street in St. George’s, 1922 
 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 15 x 16.75 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 George Ault (1891-1948) 
 
 Behind the Bakery Shop, 1922 
 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 15.5 x 11 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Niles Spencer (1893-1952) 
 
 House, Bermuda (St. George's), 1929 
 Oil on board, 13x16 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) 
 
 Banyan Tree Trunk, Bermuda, 1934 
 Pencil on paper, 21.5 x 14.75 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 
 Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) 
 
 Sunken Treasure, 1935 
 Oil on board, 18 x 24 in. 
 
 The Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda 
 

 

 
McMullen Museum of Art 
 Boston College