Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930)
In 1894, Charles Webster Hawthorne moved to Long Island, New York, to study with leading American Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase. There he began painting en plein-air and he soon became Chase’s assistant. By 1898, Hawthorne established the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A dedicated and passionate teacher, he used the school to promote the style and technique he learned from Chase, which included the use of rich tones from the Munich School and luminous colors of plein-air Impressionism. During this time, Hawthorne’s style developed as he experimented with technique, light, and color, and built upon a structural solidity that reflected the rugged and hardy natures of his subjects, the fishing people of Cape Cod.
Hawthorne traveled to Italy in 1906 where he was exposed to works by Renaissance masters, and admired their use of highly simplified outlines, broad, flat planes of slightly modulated color, and the noble calm that cloaked their humanity. This influence can be seen in the present work, which reflects his ability to instill in his subjects a quiet dignity that reaffirms the beauty and glory of human experience.
Information courtesy of Skinner, Inc. and Kathleen Gibbons, Butler Museum of Art, www.butlerart.com