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THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

ATLANTIC COAST

measurements
22 3/4 by 44 in.

alternate measurements
(57.8 by 111.8 cm)

signed Wm.T. Richards and dated 1870, l.l.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Fairman Rogers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (acquired directly from the artist)
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., Los Angeles, California
William A. Karges Fine Art, Los Angeles, California (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 27, 1993, lot 172, illustrated in color)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

EXHIBITED

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, n.d.
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.
Los Angeles, California, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, An American Perspective: 19th Century Art from the Collection of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., July-September 1982

LITERATURE

Linda Ferber, "'My Dear Friend': A letter from Thomas Eakins to William T. Richards," Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 34, no. 1, 1994, p. 17, illustrated

NOTE

William Trost Richards, a member of both the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, devoted the first half of his career to painting landscapes of the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill mountains. His style was largely influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the writings of their evangelist John Ruskin. Beginning in 1870, Richards's focus shifted to the coastlines of the Atlantic and it is for his marine subjects for which he is best known today. Linda Ferber writes, "During the 1870s Richards spent the summer months surveying the northeastern shores from the flat sandy beaches of New Jersey to the rocky coasts of New England. Sketchbooks and plein-air watercolor studies provided material for the carefully finished oils and watercolors he painted during winters in his Germantown studio. These coastal subjects, Atlantic Coast for example, found favor with many Philadelphia collectors...[such as] Fairman Rogers" (Archives of American Art Journal, p. 17). Atlantic Coast , with its translucent pale green waves that attest Richards' careful studies in watercolor, is one of his most successful seascapes. Atlantic Coast was painted in 1870 and subsequently acquired by Fairman Rogers, one of Richards's ardent supporters.