John Frederick Kensett 1816-1872

The present work retains its original frame. 

John Frederick Kensett's A Quiet Day on the Beverly Shore, Magnolia, Massachusetts, 1871, stands as one of the masterworks of his mature career, displaying the reductive elegance and exquisite treatment of light and atmosphere for which he is celebrated. Born in 1815, Kensett started his career as an engraver in New Haven, Connecticut, before experimenting with landscape painting to advance his career at the suggestion of his friend, John Casilear. Kensett traveled to Europe to continue his education like many Hudson River School artists and, following his return to America in 1847, devoted his practice to capturing scenic views throughout New York and New England, ultimately becoming one of the leading American painters of the Civil War era.

Kensett's approach to nature painting focused on his favorite locations closer to home as opposed to the exotic destinations abroad that inspired many of his contemporaries, and he distinguished himself through serene coastal scenes illustrating the Luminist aesthetic: "in the mid-1850s, Kensett began to turn away from what might be called an early Hudson River School pictorial mode—with contorted tree trunks, zigzagging recession into deep space, and an emphasis on wilderness subjects—toward a quieter, more atmospheric and contemplative mode." [1] Beverly, Massachusetts, the subject of the present work, is among the handful of locations for which Kensett became best-known (along with Bash-Bish Falls, Massachusetts, Lake George, New York, and Newport, Rhode Island), and he painted more than twenty scenes of this summer resort twenty-five miles north of Boston. The present work illustrates the artist's interest in exploring subtle atmospheric effects while repeating motifs specific to a location, seen on the Beverly shore in the large outcropping of rock topped by foliage, the clusters of figures engaged in various leisure activities, and the glimmering sunlight at the water's edge. The present painting highlights stylistic concerns the artist explored between 1859 and 1872 that coalesce in a meticulous and highly developed composition that possesses a tranquil mood and timeless quality. A Quiet Day on the Beverly Shore, Magnolia, Massachusetts has distinguished provenance and was once owned by Otis D. Swan, a trustee of the New York Society Library and secretary of the Union League Club, New York. The Union League Club, New York, the painting's long-time home, was founded in 1863 as a political and social club supporting Union causes and President Abraham Lincoln.

[1] John Paul Driscoll and John K. Howatt, John Frederick Kensett: An American Master, Worcester, Massachusetts: Worcester Art Museum, 1985, p. 153.