Important Maritime Artists: Reynolds Beal and Edward J. Holsag

The Important Marine & Maritime Paintings Show is on view now in Nantucket for the length of the summer. This exhibition represents some of the best and most renowned historical marine painters, as well as established contemporary artists.

Maritime and marine painting were particularly popular genres beginning in the 17^th century. These paintings depict ships at sea, often including human figures. They can also be purely seascapes, incorporating the water, sky, and the shoreline.

To give you more background on the show, we'll highlight a few of the major artists included in this show!

One great American landscape painter was Reynolds Beal, known for his contributions to American Impressionism.The American Impressionists followed the French masters and used very visible and thick brushstrokes in their landscapes. Beal studied with the one of the most important artists of this movement, William Merritt Chase. Beal's work is characterized by these brushstrokes, and their bright, intense colors.

Reynolds Beal, Gloucester Harbor, 1917, oil on board

A contemporary of Beal, Edward J. Holslag, created similar Impressionist works around the same time. He was a student of John LaFarge, an important French artist for the stained glass medium. Holslag was itinerat, always traveling around Europe and the United States. He is best known for a mural he painted in the Congress Hotel in Chicago in 1917. Similar to Beal, his paintings are have the characteristic Impressionist brushstrokes. Also like Beal, he painted Gloucester Harbor:

Edward J. Holslag, Gloucester Harbor, 1919, oil on canvas

The exhibition runs until September in Nantucket.