Titles

The original title is not known. Several variations on a title have been suggested:

• 'Sea Shore scene with bathers' (1917, Colnaghi). 1
• 'Coast Scene' (1921, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo). 2
• 'Coast Scene Bathers' (1933, Art Institute of Chicago). 3
• 'Coast Scene: Bathers' (1980, YMSM). 4

'Coast Scene: Bathers' is the generally accepted title.

Description

A beach scene in horizontal format. In the foreground a dozen figures walk, sit, and play on a grey beach, and a couple at right swim in the pale turquoise sea, which breaks in gentle waves on the beach. Just to right of centre at upper right is a sailing boat. A darker shade of greenish blue marks the horizon. The sky is pale blue.

Site

Possibly Dieppe, a busy port and tourist destination on the French coast.

Comments

Treuherz comments that La Plage, by Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), shows the strong influence of such works by Whistler as Coast Scene: Bathers. 5

The Art Institute website comments:

'In this intimately scaled seascape, James McNeill Whistler employed the sparest of compositional elements to evoke a coastal atmosphere. Broad horizontal bands of blues and gray suggest sky, ocean, and sand, with dabs of thin pigment giving economical, yet expressive form to around a dozen figures on the windswept beach. Whistler dedicated much of his artistic practice to capturing the mood and color harmonies of marine scenes. Coast Scene, Bathers was painted en plein air, a practice to which the artist returned in the 1880s. It marked a distinctive shift from his studio-produced Nocturnes of the previous decade.' 6