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A pink-toned sandy beach meets a placid body of pale blue water under a hazy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. To our left, the beach curves like a letter C to end in the near distance with a terracotta-orange rocky outcropping and a boulder, which comes halfway across the composition. Muted green trees grow atop the outcropping, and the left half is blanketed in moss or grass. A white rowboat has been pulled into the sand about halfway along the beach. One person sits or crouches inside, and a red cloth or net hangs over the side closer to us. A person wearing a straw hat, white, long-sleeved shirt, and brown pants carries a basket over one arm as they walk away from us, not far from the rowboat. The water is very light blue where it laps gently at the shore but is washed by diffuse sunlight to parchment white in the distance. The horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas, nearly blends into the milky white bank of clouds above. A few sailboats are near the horizon on the right half of the painting, and a few small patches of blue sky show through the clouds in the upper right corner.
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A pink-toned sandy beach meets a placid body of pale blue water under a hazy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. To our left, the beach curves like a letter C to end in the near distance with a terracotta-orange rocky outcropping and a boulder, which comes halfway across the composition. Muted green trees grow atop the outcropping, and the left half is blanketed in moss or grass. A white rowboat has been pulled into the sand about halfway along the beach. One person sits or crouches inside, and a red cloth or net hangs over the side closer to us. A person wearing a straw hat, white, long-sleeved shirt, and brown pants carries a basket over one arm as they walk away from us, not far from the rowboat. The water is very light blue where it laps gently at the shore but is washed by diffuse sunlight to parchment white in the distance. The horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas, nearly blends into the milky white bank of clouds above. A few sailboats are near the horizon on the right half of the painting, and a few small patches of blue sky show through the clouds in the upper right corner.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Beach at Beverly

John Frederick Kensett

Date
c. 1869/1872
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 55.8 x 86.4 cm (21 15/16 x 34 in.) framed: 85.1 x 115.6 x 8.6 cm (33 1/2 x 45 1/2 x 3 3/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1978.6.5
Credit line
Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr.
Time span
1851 to 1875
Department
CAB
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • American
  • United States
  • landscape
  • Romantic
  • Coast
  • MA
  • American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I [A-L]
  • Beverly Beach
Provenance

Possibly Jonathan Sturges [1802-1874], New York, and Fairfield, Connecticut;[1] his son, Frederick Sturges [d. 1917], New York, and Fairfield, Connecticut; his son, Frederick Sturges, Jr. [1876-1977], New York, and Fairfield, Connecticut;[2] bequest 1978 to NGA. [1] According to letter of 18 January 1966 from Frederick Sturges, Jr., and letters of 27 August and 7 December 1981 from Frederick Sturges III (in NGA curatorial files) family tradition held that paintings in the Sturges collection were originally purchased by Jonathan Sturges. In this instance and four others (Kensett, _Beacon Rock, Newport Harbor_ [1953.1.1]; Casilear, _View on Lake George_ [1978.6.1]; and Durand, _Forest in the Morning Light_ and _Pastoral Scene_ [1978.6.2 and 1978.6.3]) no certain evidence establishes ownership by Jonathan Sturges (see _The Bashful Cousin_ [1978.6.4] by Edmonds for more on Jonathan Sturges as a collector). No works by Kensett are mentioned in the discussions of the Jonathan Sturges collection in "Our Private Collections, No. II," _The Crayon_ 3, February 1856: 57 58; Thomas S. Cummings, _Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design (1825-1863)_, Philadelphia, 1865: 141 (reprint, New York, 1965); or Henry T. Tuckerman, _Book of the Artists_, New York, 1867: 627 (reprint, New York, 1967). [2] Frederick Sturges, Jr., died 14 October 1977 (letter of 27 January 1982 from Frederick Sturges III, in NGA curatorial files). _Beach at Beverly_ came to the National Gallery as a bequest with four other paintings.

NGA object ID 56574. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.