Titles

Whistler's original title is not known. Suggested titles include:

• 'A Freshening Breeze' (1905, ISSPG). 1
• 'A Coast Scene with shipping out at Sea, and Boats drawn up on the Shore' (1911, Christie's). 2
• 'A Freshening Breeze' (1980, YMSM). 3

'A Freshening Breeze' is the preferred title.

Description

A beach scene in vertical format. In the foreground at right is a breakwater stretching out to left into the sea. Several small rowing boats are drawn up on the shore and one is putting out through the choppy sea. In the middle distance at right is the end of a pier with a sailing ship moored beside it, and at sea, to left, are two small sailing boats and a sailing ship, moored. The sea is a deep grey/green and the sky grey.

Site

It may have been painted at Southend on the English Coast. It is closely related to several watercolours that were probably painted there, including The Anchorage [M.0887] and Southend: The Pleasure Yacht [M.0891].

The Terra Foundation website comments:

'A Freshening Breeze depicts the harbor of one of two English coastal sites – St. Ives in Cornwall or Southend-on-Sea in Essex – that ... Whistler visited in 1883. Rapidly painted in thin washes, this small work provides a lofty glimpse of beached boats along the strand, choppy gray water dotted with vessels ... A pier extending into the sea from the right edge and sewage pipes running from the beach into the water provide a horizontal counterpoint to the composition’s narrow verticality, a feature that recalls the Japanese woodblock prints Whistler greatly admired. ...

In the early 1880s he visited various coastal locations in England, France, and Holland and produced several small panel paintings on marine themes … In these works, Whistler experimented with extreme economy in the representation of objects and settings to create “impressions” – summary evocations of a scene that emphasize the decorative over the descriptive. Playing at the boundary between representation and abstraction, these paintings anticipated modernist developments in art at the turn of the century.' 4