American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Collection of Charles and Virginia Bowden

Note

The present painting will be included in the forthcoming Fern Coppedge Catalogue Raisonné compiled by Les and Sue Fox (2022).

Fern Coppedge first visited Cape Ann, and especially the harbor of Gloucester, on the advice of her friend Henry Snell in the summer of 1916. She regularly visited the enchanting harbor thereafter until 1934. Like Henry Fitz Hugh Lane, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam or Jane Peterson, Coppedge felt attracted to the unique New England light, and enjoyed capturing the shimmering sea, picturesque clapboard houses, lobster traps, and rugged granite cliffs. Contrary to her male counterparts, she mostly avoided the touristic locations and preferred to paint in quaint, semi-deserted places, such as Pigeon Cove, Norman's Woe, or Rocky Neck (East Gloucester), a small inlet jutting into Gloucester's vast harbor - as shown here. A master colorist, Coppedge bathes her subject in a soothing light, and ensure the composition's overall dynamism via an alternance of bold hues of color, which gives depth to the picture and helps the viewer's eye to reach the far horizon. Seen stretching across the bottom of the canvas, the town is symbolized by a row of colorful boxes and cubes of various formats and sizes. All boldly colored, they recall Coppedge's signature cottages from Bucks County that she usually depicts blanketed in snow. Water here occupies most of the canvas. Painted in turquoise, lavender and pink hues, the sea blends with the similarly colored sky above, and contrasts with the nearby rusty and earthy tones, thus contributing to the work's light atmosphere and airy quality. Boats moored in the harbor - a favorite motif of Coppedge - are meticulously rendered and are responsible for the painting's overall structure, and balance. As to their slow, vanishing trail left behind, it poetically suggests the cozy, tranquil atmosphere of an old-fashioned New England town, which the artist liked so much.