Above the edge of the city of Ramatuelle on the Saint Tropez Peninsula, a herdsman takes in the view of the Mediterranean glory beyond the city. The medieval town his today home to the luxurious beach of Pampelonne, playground of the world’s wealthiest. In Camoin’s time, it is still primarily a small town, situated near Gassin and immortal San Tropez. The homogenous architectural style of Spanish clay and red-tile roofs is in common use, in contrast to today’s elegant hotels and resorts.

Touches of earthy brown build the foreground hillside and feed the growth of the largest green tree that brackets the reaches of the painting. Interesting to note that the artist used a suggestive, skipping stroke here and for the rooftops he was more concerned with the geometric parallel lines and deep tones depressions between the tiles.

Deep lush foliage cuts the coastal hills and canyons in this view, and the idle sense is that the day is more relaxed and less frenzied than today’s pace. The ocean is a deep blue, the sky is lightened with clouds beyond the trees, and no one cares if the man is at leisure while the two blackish goats hit the canvas as shadowy spectres, oblivious to our watching presence. The artist strode this canyon, and found a pleasant escape for us all..

A slick, cool somber mood pervades the coastal anchorage of two California lumber schooners in this early 20TH Century look by William Ritschel. The evening fog, wet but forgiving, is holding the lanterns’ glow in the air and a bit of the bright bounces back off the cool ripple of the water’s surface.

The crews are not visible, yet there is a show of activity with a cabin brightly lit in the closest schooner while the sails are being slackened on the other. The blunt fore-and-aft rigged vessels could pile quite high with wood cut from the Pacific Northwest forests and ship coastwise from San Diego to Olympia. In those ports, merchant ships from the world over would procure the lumber to foster the greatest building expansion the world has ever experience in the decades of the late 19TH and early 20TH Centuries.

From the elevated perspective, it is easy to imagine Ritschel stalking the cliff sides of California and spotting the schooners in the open calm. The oil on the canvas is stroked and worked so excessively that it has the feel of mist itself, and most likely some California fog is imbued into the mix from his open air Carmel studio where he painted. The small gig boats tethered with rope make it possible for the sailors and artist to have visited each other as well.

An excellent work showing the precision frequently present in his oils, Bricher brings forth similar ships of different scale. Focusing on sailing subjects, he presents an accomplished overview of a vast distance of this Northeast Coast anchorage. An expanse of clouds fill the sky, offering light variation over the promontory headland, and his brush application suggests wood textures and deep color for the hulls, the largest resting on bottom with the tide.

The unusual presentation, for a Bricher painting, of a foreground composition with well-defined vessels enhances the work’s appeal. Note the paced variation of diminutive waves rolling shoreward across the translucent water with accents of sunlight. A lone figure stands along the smaller starboard cabin. One must wonder what’s in hand- an anchor line, a fishing pole or perhaps a drift net- at the end of the rope.

Bricher, as this canvas attests, helped define the luminous school that was fundamentally devoted to displays of light and air. He strongly influenced American marine painting and helped produce some of its finest moments. Working primarily in the Boston area and later in New York, he traveled nearly every summer up the Northeast Coast looking for the seasonal qualities of light he desired, and that his art is now much in demand for depicting.

Inspired by the success of artist contemporaries such as Francis A. Silva and Alfred T. Bricher found painting luminist scenes, Warren Sheppard sets out to capture the serene essence of a fading day within this painting of the American East Coast. He physically glistens the wet sand with soft reflective color before and after the beached hull compressed by age and the unrelenting surf. At sea a schooner catches the late wind and sets a course back to port. It is peaceful yet lonely scene, and a solid atmospheric composition that uses light and color to project its content. This is a very early work by the artist, we feel, of a favorite beach in his home state.

The subtle interplay of colors works in this instance as the deep gray-green ocean rises in a short wave break, most likely along the outer New Jersey shore. The horizon glows with a warmth of rose, and the clouds are driven from the sky. The entirety is simply worked into the composition in a very tight, natural order.

Sheppard has worked layers of elements into the picture with an interesting horizontal, left to right presentation. The horizon divides the realms and yet is countered by the dark hulk. The shore break splits the swell while its rhythm carries perfectly through the reflection cast across it. Everything reads left to right until the sky once again draws the eye back around to revisit and inspect the overall fine work. The emotional center draws not from the bones of the ship, but from the visit to the shore itself.

A very important moment of history for the United States Navy, the assembled mass of naval might is on formal review by President William Howard Taft and his Secretary of the Navy while on progress down the Hudson River into New York Harbor. The last of the Armed Cruiser Class met the first of the American Dreadnaught Battleships, U.S.S. ARKANSAS and WYOMING, on this epic occasion on October 14, 1912. More than 100 navy vessels from auxiliary ships to the largest of battleships were on display.

President Taft, a huge man prone to be somewhat reactionary in his decisions, if history in hindsight is allowed to make such judgements, was impressed with the direction of the country’s naval growth. He inherited the policies of President Theodore Roosevelt, and expanded the American presence throughout the hemisphere. In the midst of having decided not to campaign against Roosevelt and eventual winner Woodrow Wilson, President Taft chose to go aboard ARKANSAS (BB-33) and cruise to inspect the newly begun canal zone in Panama.

Showing his unique artistic style, Hayley Lever made a sensational impact in New York City starting in 1911 with his interpretive Post-Impressionism of such aggressive texture, brushwork and coloration. On hand to witness this epic moment, the New York Times wrote that the event was “the greatest assemblage of naval strength ever assembled.”

A consummate professional artist, Clark took great care to enjoy his life with his wife and son, Alson Jr. Extremely well traveled, and maintaining a residence in Paris, he settled into California to recover from an injury to his hearing in World War I. In this last quarter century he blended epic historic murals for the Los Angeles Cathay Circle Theater and the Pasadena Playhouse, with beautiful local scenes Clark discovered and caught with oil on canvas. Here he has locked in a precious view of the beach goers of Santa Monica.

The summer activity is in full swing, as far as the middle season may last nine months or more in California. The vast sea of beach umbrellas and the field of colors they cast drew Clark to linger and paint. Quite interesting choice is his semi-isolation, southside near the pier’s decaying underbelly with the tire inner-tube rental business languishing along with the rest. Bathers idly spend the day, with the Santa Monica Mountain to the north spanning from Topanga to Malibu and Point Dume in contrast to the hot clean California sand under Clark’s feet. While he painted many California scenes, they very rarely ever come out of private collections onto the art market.