American 20th-21st Century Coastal, Marine and Maritime Art
(above: Frederick J. Waugh, Southwesterly Gale, St. Ives, 1907, oil on canvas, 30.1 x 50.1 inches, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
(above: Frederick Judd Waugh, Moonrise (Quarter Moon on Tumbling Seas), c. 1900, oil on canvas, 25.25 x 30 inches, El Paso Museum of Art. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Introduction
This section of the Traditional Fine Arts Organization (TFAO) catalogue Topics in American Art is devoted to the topic "American 20th-21st Century Coastal, Marine and Maritime Paintings:" Articles and essays specific to this topic published in our Resource Library are listed at the beginning of the section. Clicking on titles takes readers directly to these articles and essays. The date at the end of each title is the Resource Library publication date.
After articles and essays from Resource Library are links to valuable online resources found outside our website. Links may be to museums' articles about exhibits, plus much more topical information based on our online searches. Following online resources may be information about offline resources.
We recommend that readers search within our website to find detailed information for any topic. Please see our page How to research topics not listed for more information.
Our 29 articles and essays honoring the American experience through its art:
Determined to Paint: The Art of George W. Hallock; essay by Geoffrey K. Fleming (1/19/13)
Charles Vickery: Maritime painter; essay by by David L. Wilson, Jr. (9/22/06)
Fishing on the Grand Banks: The Marine Art of Thomas Hoyne (8/1/05)
Frederick Judd Waugh, 1861 - 1940: From Love to Knowledge -- An Artist's Journey (6/5/03)
Pirates: From the Golden Age of American Illustration (6/2/03)
Across the Waves, article by James Houghton (9/2/01)
The Twelfth National Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists (3/9/01)
Scenes of the Pacific (10/9/00)
Maritime Exhibitions at Lyman Allyn Museum of Art (7/11/00)
7th Annual Maritime Art Exhibit at Coos Art Museum (6/27/00)
Water: A Contemporary American View (10/11/99)
Rie Muñoz: 100 Recent Alaskan Watercolors (9/17/99)
Margy Gates at Ventura County Maritime Museum (8/21/99)
From Ship to Shore: Marine Paintings (6/4/99)
Visions of the Eastern Shore (7/12/99)
Along the Water's Edge: Seascapes from the Permanent Collection (2/2/99)
The Lynn Beach Painters: Art Along the North Shore, 1880-1920 (12/23/98)
The Civil War Naval Scenes of Xanthus Smith (9/1/98)
Romancing the Sea: Contemporary American Marine Art
Contemporary American Marine Art
From other websites:
Alexis Rockman: Shipwrecks is a 2021 exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum which says: "Through this new series of dramatic depictions of historic shipwrecks, American artist Alexis Rockman symbolizes the impact that the migration of goods, people, plants, and animals has had on our planet." Accessed 6/21
Alexis Rockman: Shipwrecks is a 2022 exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum which says: "In this new body of work, the New York-based artist Alexis Rockman reenvisions shipwreck narratives to focus less on human drama than on the broad planetary implications of the forces behind them, including trade, migration, colonization, and globalization. The artist's vivid series of large canvases and intimate watercolors points to how an increasingly interconnected world has generated profound ecological change." Also see the website of the artist. Accessed 11/22
American Society of Marine Artists website. Accessed August, 2015.
The Art of William O. Golding: Hard Knocks, Hardships, and Lots of Experience is a 2023 exhibit at the Telfair Museums which says: "Telfair Museums presents the first large museum survey of the work of William O. Golding (1874-1943), an African American seaman and artist who recorded a half-century of maritime experience in more than one hundred vibrant drawings. In the 1930s, Golding was a patient at the United States Marine Hospital in Savannah, where he represented his experiences in expressive pencil and crayon drawings which combine memory, imagination, and sailors' lore." Accessed 7/23
Avocation to Vocation: Prints by F. Townsend Morgan is a 2017 exhibit at the Georgia Museum of Art which says: "Through the Federal Relief Agency sponsored by Key West Art Project, Morgan journeyed to Key West, Florida and began working on prints of the surrounding seascapes and coastal life. From 1936 to 1937, he worked for the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) in the Virgin Islands, the smallest of the four New Deal art programs. He then returned to Key West and established its Community Art Center in 1941." - To read more after exhibit closes, go to "Past Exhibitions" section of museum website. Accessed 8/17
Ebb & Flow: Seascape and Shoreline Views is a 2017 exhibit at the Heckscher Museum of Art which says: "This exhibition features over four dozen paintings, prints, and photographs from the Museum's permanent collection, including works by Reynolds Beal, Eugene Boudin, Alfred Thompson Bricher, Stan Brodsky, Arthur Dove, Edward and Thomas Moran, Roy Nicholson, Jules Olitski, Betty Parsons, Maurice Prendergast, and William Trost Richards, among others." Accessed 11/17
In American Waters: The Sea in American Painting is an exhibition co-curated by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Alabama and Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Crystal Bridges described the exhibition as follows: "For over 250 years, artists have been inspired to capture the beauty, violence, poetry, and transformative power of the sea in American life. Oceans play a key role in American society no matter where we live, and still today, the sea continues to inspire painters to capture its mystery and power. In American Waters is a new exhibition in which marine painting is revealed to be so much more than ship portraits. Be transported across time and water on the wave of a diverse range of modern and historical artists including Georgia O'Keeffe, Amy Sherald, Kay Walking Stick, Norman Rockwell, Hale Woodruff, Paul Cadmus, Thomas Hart Benton, Jacob Lawrence, Valerie Hegarty, Stuart Davis, and many more. Discover the sea as an expansive way to reflect on American culture and environment, learn how coastal and maritime symbols moved inland across the United States, and consider what it means to be "in American waters". Accessed 9/23.
Jim Caldwell, Water Play: Nature's Abstracts from the Sky is a 2017 exhibit at the Peninsula Museum of Art which says: "Landscape painter Jim Caldwell usually has his feet planted firmly on the ground. However, for his show at PMA, Caldwell takes us on a glorious ride over the Delta and the South Bay salt flats." Also see artist's website Accessed 12/17
Katherine Bradford is a 2017 exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth which says: "Katherine Bradford is known for her vibrant palette, faux-naïf style, and eccentric compositions. Often built up over months and sometimes years, the surfaces of Bradford's paintings are textured, comprising multiple thin, semi-transparent coats of acrylic paint, with hints of pentimenti in the final compositions." Accessed 12/17
Joe Zucker: Scrolls is a 2017 exhibit at the Housatonic Museum of Art which says: "Zucker's Scrolls series reflects his involvement with the sea as well as his interest in the legends of pirates like Captain William Kidd and Blackbeard, who terrorized the high seas and sought refuge off the shores of Long Island and Connecticut. For over thirty years, Zucker has returned again and again to the imagery of frigates in full sail, cannon balls, yard arms and the leering grin of the Jolly Roger, creating new iterations of these familiar signs and symbols." - To read more after exhibit closes, go to "Past Exhibitions" section of museum website. Accessed 11/17
Mary Armstrong: Conditions of Faith is an exhibition hosted by the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College in Boston, Massachusetts from September 9, 2019 through December 8, 2019. The Museum describes the exhibition as follows: "Conditions of Faith presents seascapes and landscapes painted by Mary Armstrong over the last seven years. Nature and memory inspire her layered, complex compositions. Oil and wax depict forces of nature, both imagined and real, in the seascapes. For Armstrong, roiling currents, sunlit estuaries, and particularly rising waves are "a perfect visual metaphor for change, both desired and feared, destructive and regenerative, personal and political. Her desert landscapes illustrate the mountain ranges of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California, where the artist has visited since the early 1990s. In these oil pastels Armstrong replaces tumultuous Maine waters with swirling clouds over the Borrego Valley, capturing the shifting relationship between earth and sky. Armstrong taught painting in Boston College's Department of Art, Art History, and Film from 1989 to 2019."Accessed 9/23
(Camden Boat House, 2021. Photo by John Hazeline)
Go to Coastal, Marine
and Maritime Art: 18-19th Century, 19-20th Century, 20-21st Century
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