In the first of these two articles visiting the coast of Maine, I showed the work of nineteenth century artists, ending with Winslow Homer’s works made in and around his studio at Prouts Neck, just twenty-five metres/yards from the North Atlantic Ocean. To remind you of the locations named for these paintings, here’s Maine’s entry in the National Atlas of the United States (1997).

Many of the paintings in this article, covering the twentieth century, were made by one of America’s most prominent Impressionists, Childe Hassam (1859–1935). Born in Boston, his mother was a Mainer. Hassam returned to New York after completing his training in Paris, in 1889, and started to spend his summers in the country, often in his mother’s home state, and typically on Appledore Island, the largest of the Isles of Shoals, off the coast of Portsmouth and straddling the border between New Hampshire and Maine. Over the next twenty-five years or so, Hassam painted some of the finest views of this section of the coast, which also reflect his artistic development.

Thomas Laighton and Levi Thaxter were responsible for starting the tourist trade on Appledore Island in the middle of the nineteenth century. When she was only fifteen, Laighton’s daughter Celia married Thaxter, and later she became a popular poet, one of the leading figures on the island. Hassam’s Celia Thaxter’s Garden, Isles of Shoals, Maine (1890) shows the poet’s flower garden in his high Impressionist style, and tells how idyllic those summers must have been.

The following summer, Hassam moved his easel closer to the water’s edge for his Poppies, Isles of Shoals (1891), shifting his emphasis more to the coast itself.

Hassam then spent summers in other locations suited to his Impressionist leaning: Gloucester, MA, and sections of the Connecticut coast.

He seems to have returned to Appledore Island soon into the new century, when he found life in New York getting him down. His style had evolved and his brushwork and use of fine marks of contrasting colours are more typical of late Pissarro, and become Post-Impressionist in passages. This is shown well in his choice of motif and facture in Cliff Rock – Appledore from 1903.

The following summer, he dispensed with all land apart from a sliver of distant shore, painting just the sea and its white horses in The West Wind, Isles of Shoals (1904).

After a bout of depression and heavy drinking, Hassam reformed himself, taking his art outdoors again. He painted extensively in Oregon, including its rugged coast, visited Paris again, and worked with renewed enthusiasm and energy.

This took him back to Appledore Island, although his friend Celia Thaxter had died almost twenty years earlier. Isles of Shoals, Broad Cove (1911) once again shows his use of broken, contrastingly coloured brushstrokes, and his stark motif.

Part of his rejuvenation was to use a broader range of media, including pastels and watercolours. His Sunday Morning, Appledore (1912) is one of his briskly painted watercolour sketches.

This watercolour sketch of The Gorge, Appledore (1912) shows how differently he depicts the coastal rocks with bolder strokes of transparent colour.

When he returned to oils, though, he reframes completely with increasingly organised groups of brushstrokes, as in The North Gorge, Appledore, Isles of Shoals (1912).

The following summer he was back on Appledore Island, painting outdoors. In The South Ledges, Appledore (1913), his placement of a figure in a white dress and hat against near-white rock merges her with her surroundings. A more conventional approach would have set her against the darker rock in the distance, or dressed her in contrasting clothing.

Just as he had in The West Wind, Isles of Shoals from almost a decade earlier, Hassam pushed the land to each side, and in his Surf, Isles of Shoals (1913) concentrated his canvas almost entirely on the sea.

As an Impressionist, it was natural that he was repeatedly drawn to paint the coast of Maine. A more surprising visitor was Robert Henri (1865–1929), leader of the Ashcan school of realism in New York. Having made his reputation with gritty paintings of the urban landscape in New York City, he had the pochade gear and the technique.

Perhaps Henri too needed a break from city life, and in 1911 headed up to paint outdoors in front of the waves rolling in from the Atlantic. Marine – Break over Sunken Rock, Storm Sea (1911) is an example of what he painted in his pochade box. Two years later, Henri crossed the ocean to paint on Achill Island, on the north-western edge of Ireland.

George Bellows (1882–1925) is probably the best-known of Henri’s students. They had both been born in Ohio, and met in New York in 1904. Bellows made similarly rough-hewn cityscapes of New York City, concentrating on its human landscape, and painted a remarkable series depicting boxing contests.

When Robert Henri went to Maine for the summer, George Bellows went to paint on Monhegan, a small and barely populated island about fifteen miles offshore, south-west of Rockland. That first summer, one of his pochade panels was The Gulls, Monhegan (1911), its greyness broken only by the brilliant white of the birds. Bellows also visited Matinicus Isle, five miles further out into the Atlantic.

A couple of years later, Bellows painted this Rock Reef, Maine (1913).

His panels then became more colourful, capturing the unusual hues of the water and rock, in his Monhegan Island, Maine (1913).

Then, when the sun came out and the weather was set fair, Bellows’ coast burst into brilliant colour, in The Grove – Monhegan, from the same summer.

From Thomas Cole and his student Frederic Edwin Church, to Robert Henri and his student George Bellows, paintings of the coast of Maine represent much of the history of American landscape art, at least that of the East Coast. It’s a coast of great contrasts, of magnificent natural beauty, and the raw power of the ocean and weather.

This weekend I’m visiting the coast of Maine, the small state tucked away at the north-eastern extremity of the US. Although its climate may not be ideal for plein air work, its 230 miles (400 km) of ocean coastline include some of the most beautifully rugged on the North Atlantic. It has attracted many of the major landscape artists from the eastern cities, from Thomas Cole, born in Bolton, England, and raised in Ohio, to George Bellows, also born and raised in Ohio.

In these two articles, I show some of my favourite paintings of the Maine coast. This first concentrates on artists active in the nineteenth century, starting with Cole and ending with Winslow Homer. Tomorrow’s sequel features paintings by Childe Hassam and George Bellows, with a single work by Robert Henri, largely from the twentieth century.

As few of us are likely to recognise any of the locations named for these paintings, here’s Maine’s entry in the National Atlas of the United States (1997).

Generally accepted as the founder of the Hudson River School, many of Thomas Cole’s landscapes were painted in the Catskill Mountains in the south-east of New York state. In 1845, he travelled north-east to Maine, where he painted this View Across Frenchman’s Bay From Mt. Desert Island, After A Squall.

This island, larger than Martha’s Vineyard, for instance, is part of the archipelago stretching along much of the Maine coast, and now contains Acadia National Park, a popular tourist location. Cole shows this view as a squall is moving on, the wind and sea still showing its effects. It’s likely that Cole’s student Frederic Edwin Church was with him there.

Fitz Henry Lane was born in the port of Gloucester, MA, and made his career painting marine views in New England. His view Off Mount Desert Island from 1856 shows the same island in more peaceful weather, with a ship at anchor, its sails limp in the calm.

Frederic Edwin Church was another New Englander, best known for his huge and amazingly detailed panoramic landscapes of Central and South America. He had settled in New York by 1850, and seems to have taken trips most summers to the wilds of Maine to paint en plein air in oils. He painted this sparse view of Mt. Desert Island, Maine Coast in oils on paper in 1850.

The following year, Church returned to paint this rich twilight seascape of a Beacon, off Mount Desert Island (1851).

Church made his first visit to South America in 1853. I’m not sure whether he painted Schoodic Peninsula from Mount Desert at Sunrise (1850–55) before or after that trip, but it contrasts with the highly detailed and complex views he made of The Andes of Ecuador (1855), and similar later works. This peninsula is the section of mainland to the east of Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island.

Church’s Eagle Lake Viewed from Cadillac Mountain, Mount Desert Island, Maine (1850–60) is a slightly later painting featuring a considerably more complex motif. Cadillac Mountain is relatively low, at 466 metres (1,530 feet), the highest point of Mt Desert Island, and affords spectacular views such as this, looking north-west from the east side of the island.

Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837–1908) was one of the last artists of the Hudson River School, and studied with Albert Bierstadt. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on its border with Maine, many of his best works are coastal landscapes. Although he lived in Staten Island, New York, at some stage he travelled up to paint this tranquil view On the Coast of Maine.

Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904) was a latecomer to landscape painting, but made a speciality of painting coastal salt marshes in New England, before moving to Florida in 1883. In 1877, he seems to have made his way to the southern edge of Maine, to paint a stretch of marsh near the new tourist resort of York Harbor, Coast of Maine, to the north-east of Portsmouth. This is a marked contrast to the rough and rocky coast further north and east.

After Church, the landscape painter most strongly associated with the Maine coast was Winslow Homer. Born in Boston, his formative periods were spent on the coast. During the 1870s, he started painting in watercolour around Gloucester, Massachusetts, then spent 1881-82 developing his art further in Cullercoats, a fishing community in north-east England.

Shortly after his return from England, Winslow Homer moved to Prouts Neck in Scarborough, on the coast south of Portland, Maine. This was rapidly becoming a summer seasonal resort, and Homer’s new studio was only twenty-five metres/yards from the sea, overlooking Cannon Rock. His Incoming Tide, Scarboro, Maine (1883) (above) is a typical watercolour from this period, with Breaking Storm, Coast of Maine (1894) (below) demonstrating his versatility in technique.

Apart from the fashions, The Outlook, Maine Coast (1894) could have been one of his superb watercolours from Cullercoats over a decade earlier.

This oil painting of Cannon Rock from 1895 is more of a puzzle. It shows the rock just outside his studio at Prouts Neck, that he was greatly familiar with. Homer has a deserved reputation for careful realism that at times seems almost documentary. Yet the impressive breaker shown here could only have occurred when the tide was low; the inlet in the foreground shows that, in that part of the painting at least, the tide was high, not low. Perhaps even Winslow Homer took a little artistic licence at times.

Homer’s wonderful twilight view of West Point, Prout’s Neck (1900) sees us into the twentieth century, and the new generation of artists to paint the coast of Maine.