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and dated '04, l.r. - - oil on canvas 26 x 29 in. (66 x 73.7 cm.)PROVENANCEMilch Galleries, New YorkNew York, Parke-Bernet Galleries (Sale: November 24, 1939, lot 41)W. H. VanderpoolNew York, Sotheby Parke-Bernet (Sale: April 21, 1978, lot 80)EXHIBITEDNew York, Fishel, Adler & Schwartz Gallery, Willard Metcalf, Feb. 1905New York, Montross Gallery, Ten American Painters, Mar.-Apr. 1905Providence, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Willard Metcalf, Apr.-May 1905Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, The Tenth Annual Exhibition, Nov. 1905-Jan. 1906Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 101st Annual Exhibition, Jan.-Mar. 1906, no. 639Chicago, O'Brien's Gallery, Ten American Painters, 1907New York, Montross Gallery, May 1908Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Directions in American Painting 1875-1925, June-Aug. 1982, pp. 50-51, illus. as Boothbay Harbor (this exhibition travelled to various locations, 1982-1987)Youngstown, Youngstown State University, The John J. McDonough Museum of Art, Inaugural Exhibition, Oct. 1991-Jan. 1992, p. 15; 28, illus. (cover)Columbus, Columbus Museum of Art, A Nation's Legacy, 150 Years of American Art from Ohio Collections, Jan.-Mar. 1992, p. 67, no. 40, illus. (this exhibition travelled to Tokyo, The Isetan Museum, April-May 1992; Yamaguchi, The Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art, May-June 1992; Fukushima, The Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art, June-Aug. 1992; Takamatsu, The Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Aug.-Sept. 1992; Osaka, Daimaru Museum Umeda, Sept.-Oct. 1992)LITERATURENew York Tribune, Feb. 4, 1905"Current Art Events," International Studio, vol. 25, 1905New York Herald, Feb. 4, 1906O. Rodriguez Roque, "American Impressionist Paintings in the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. John J. McDonough," Antiques, Nov. 1985; p. 1005, pl. lll, illus.RELATED LITERATURER. Cortissoz, American Artists, 1923, p. 144E. deVeer and R. Boyle, Sunlight & Shadow, The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf, New York, 1987, pp. 77-85U. Hiesinger, Impressionism in America, The Ten American Painters, New York, 1991, pp. 153-170"... Take the picturesque East Boothbay Harbor with its subtle tones of gray and its still more subtle arrangement of lines. The sweep of the shore... the sprawling buildings on the right, the projecting lines of rough piers, and the masses of the landscape beyond, are all set forth with that swift touch to which we have referred..." (New York Tribune, Feb. 4, 1905)The anonymous reviewer's response to East Boothbay Harbor typified the critical acclaim that greeted Metcalf's 1905 one-person exhibition at Fishel, Adler & Schwartz in New York City. The twenty-one canvases that Metcalf included in that show represented, in his own words, a "renaissance" in both his personal life and the direction of his career. Since his return from Giverny in 1888 the artist had been plagued by excessive drinking, gambling debts, and sporadic productivity, but in 1903 he made a break from New York and returned to Maine, where his parents had acquired a farmhouse and land at Clark's Cove on the Damariscotta Peninsula. For the next year, Metcalf focussed his attention on painting the landscape in and around the Boothbays and the Peninsula. East Boothbay Harbor was painted from the vantage point of the Barlow Hill Road property of the Rice family, who were owners of the boatworks depicted below.The paintings of this period consolidate a profound change in the artist's approach that had been evident as early as 1895, when he painted with Hassam in Gloucester. Like other pictures of the period, the composition of East Boothbay Harbor is a bold and uncluttered arrangement of diagonals, tempered by a cool, atmospheric haziness. The high-keyed color scheme, with its subtle variations in value, and short, rhythmic brushstrokes, mark the artist's final break with the more naturalistic palette and sometimes illustrational quality of his earlier paintings. Painted at a turning point in his career, it exemplifies the direction Metcalf's work would take in his mature years - - "Iyrical, well thought-out, and attentive to the nuances of local atmosphere conditions..." (Rodriguez Roque, p. 1004)The years 1903-06 were also a watershed for the Ten. Metcalf included East Boothbay Harbor in the group's first annual exhibition with their new dealer, Montross Gallery, in March and April of 1905. Their shift that year from Durand-Ruel, the early champion of French Impressionism, to Montross, signalled the end of the Ten's position as the gadfly of the American painting scene, and the group's new-found popularity mirrored Metcalf's own increasing respectability and acceptance as one of the country's premier landscape painters.The success of the 1905 annual inspired the Ten to organize an ambitious nation-wide tour, and East Boothbay Harbor was sent to O'Brien's Gallery in Chicago in 1907, after travelling to the Rhode Island School of Design, the Carnegie Institute, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 1905 and 1906.Dr. McDonough identified this work as "my favorite painting in the collection", citing contemporary critic Royal Cortissoz's assessment of Metcalf's power to create "a seemingly unstudied episode from the Maine Coast in which the composition is nevertheless almost formal in the perfection of its balance..." (Cortissoz, p. 144)This painting will be included in the forthcoming Willard L. Metcalf catalogue raisonne authored by Dr. Bruce W. Chambers, Ira Spanierman and Dr. William H. Gerdts.