YOUNG GIRLS ON THE BEACH
signed E Potthast lower right
oil on canvas
29.5 x 39.5cm; 11 3/4 x 15 1/2in
47.5 x 57.5cm; 18 3/4 x 22 3/4in (framed)

Provenance
Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco

The present work is typical of Potthast's quintessentially Impressionist beach scenes for which he became so admired. Bright colours and dazzling sunlight ripple across the shore as two girls play in the water, whilst another rests upon a rock. Potthast became a master of capturing leisurely moments with painterly fluency, infusing his canvases with light and colour.

A student at Cincinatti's McMicken School of Design from the precocious age of eleven, he was taught by the portrait painter Thomas Satterwhite Noble (1835-1907). In 1881 he travelled to Europe, enrolling at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich where he was taught by Carl von Marr (1858-1936), a master in the skillful handling of realistic depictions of light and shade. On his second visit to Europe in 1886 he travelled to the artists' colony at Grez-sur-Loing. There he befriended the American Impressionist Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933) and the Irish Post-Impressionist Roderic O'Conor (1860-1940). The fluid and gestural brush strokes of both painters made an immediate impact on Potthast's own developing impressionistic style, as he started to record sun-dappled landscapes and summer scenes with broken brushwork in brilliant colours.

Returning to America, in 1895 he moved to New York where he set up a school of painting. As well as describing the bustling city street scenes that he encountered on a daily basis, from his New York studio he could also easily access coastal resorts such as Coney Island in Brooklyn and Far Rockaway in Queens. In the holidays he journied further afield, his preferred destination being the the New England coastline. There he explored the beaches of Monhegan and Ogunquit Islands in Maine and Gloucester Harbour and Cape Ann in Massachusetts, locations that appear frequently in his canvases. He regularly exhibited his paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Academy of Design of which he became an associate.