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

Exhibited

Art Club of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 11-31, 1934.
Art Club of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 11-February 1, 1935.
West Texas Chamber of Commerce, Abilene, Texas, October 1940; and Abilene Museum of Fine Arts, Abilene, Texas, October 1940 (traveling exhibition).

Literature

Page Talbott and Patricia Tanis Sydney, The Philadelphia Ten: A Woman's Artist Group 1917-1945, Galleries at Moore and American Art Review Press, Philadelphia and Kansas City, 1998, pp. 57-58, pl. 22 (illustrated p. 47).
Les and Sue Fox, Fern Coppedge 1883-1951: One Woman's Struggle for Equality in the Art World, West Highland Publishing, Cincinnati, 2021, p. 99 (illustrated).

Note

Monhegan Island, sixteen miles off the coast of Maine, was a popular summer destination among American painters such as Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, and Pennsylvanians of the likes of Edward Redfield (who discovered the rugged beauty through his friend Robert Henri), as well as the entire Wyeth family. Isabel Cartwright discovered Monhegan Island in the 1920s through her good friend and fellow member of the Philadelphia Ten Constance Cochrane, who built a cottage for herself in 1930. Cartwright visited Cochrane on several occasions since then, and went on to rent a cottage for several years until she and her sisters decided to build a house in 1943, where she summered until her death in 1966. While Cochrane painted views from Monhegan Island which focused on the tempestuous sea or the rocky cliffs (see Lots 57 and 58 in Freeman's Collect: American Art sale, on December 6, 2022), Cartwright preferred to stay inland, and "found the flowers on Monhegan Island" especially "interesting material for painting (...) the brilliant color arrangement of the flowers being a constant inspiration" as the artist confessed to an interviewer from Christian Science Monitor in 1937. Instead of painting conventional still-life arrangements however, Cartwright liked to depict flowers in their natural environment, as they grew on the water's edge, on the cliffs or in private gardens, as is the case with Garden by the Sea.

The garden depicted in the present work was that of Mr. and Mrs. Starr Pierce, long-time residents of the Maine island. Considered "a true place of beauty" by Monhegan Island historian Ruth Faller, the garden was painted by many artists, including Constance Cochrane, but according to Faller "none of them did it justice like Isabel Cartwright," who painted it at least five times (another almost-identical view of the garden is owned by descendants of the Pierce family). Here, the artist introduces her viewer with a heavenly view of a vast garden planted with careful attention around an outdoor fountain, showcasing a tremendous variety of colorful flowers. In the distance, east across Monhegan Island, is the Isle of Manana. On a rise, behind the garden, is the Pierce's house, almost obliterated by the lushness of the garden, the true focus of the painting, which speaks for Monhegan's rugged, and picturesque landscape, as well as its mild, merciful and nourishing climate. Of this painting, a reviewer for the Tally-Ho wrote: "Garden by the Sea makes one want to go right out in the back yard and dig, so that in the summer time [sic] there will be lovely blooms to compensate for Philadelphia's sultriness."