Technique

The Sea, Pourville, Terra Foundation for American Art

The sea, brownish green with a deep green horizon, is painted less thickly and energetically than in Whistler’s other Pourville panels. The figures are painted delicately with a fine pointed brush, barely touched with pink and white, the figure on the right echoing the green and brown shades of the sea.

The Terra Foundation for American Art website comments:

'Painted with thinly applied pigment, through which the texture of the supporting panel is visible, the scene consists of three broad, unbounded bands of cloud-filled sky, green water enlivened by the white crests of waves, and softly mounded sand. … Whistler’s muted palette and signs of a windy, overcast day evoke the coming chill of autumn. Despite the painting’s summary execution, sketch-like intimacy, and diminutive scale, the illusion of a receding expanse of sea is fully realized through such elements as the cloud forms and the darker line of green on the horizon, where a distant ship appears; delicately painted, the wind-tossed garments of the promenading figures lend a note of anecdotal realism to the scene. The quickly sketched figure of a small dog on the beach at the right is echoed at lower left by three spots that compose the stylized butterfly motif the artist used as his distinctive signature.' 1

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

36.8 x 45.7 x 3.5 cm (14 1/2 x 18 x 1 3/8")