On the Coast of New Jersey by William Trost Richards

Today’s episode is all about relaxing, taking a little break after a long year and before the holidays hit. So I offer you a quiet beach at the Jersey Shore in this serene painting by William Trost Richards. 

We’ll find out how this Philadelphia-born artist embraced the idea of nature and art as keys to a better life and his connection to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C.

If you want to zoom in and pan around, you can find it here.

Thomas Cole and the Corcoran are key parts of the story, so here are previous episodes about them:  “A Pastoral Visit” tells the story of the founding of this influential museum and “The Voyage of Life: Childhood” is one of Cole’s dramatic allegorical paintings.

SHOW NOTES (TRANSCRIPT BELOW)

“A Long Look” themes are “Easy” by Ron Gelinas https://youtu.be/2QGe6skVzSs and “At the Cafe with You” by Onion All Stars https://pixabay.com/users/onion_all_stars-33331904/

Episode Music
“Morning” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

“Database Of Problems, Rolodex Of Lies” by Doctor Turtle
https://doctorturtle.bandcamp.com/album/free-turtle-archive-everything-cc-by-by-turtle

Artwork information 
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.195170.html

William Trost Richards information
https://chrysler.org/exhibition/seascapes-by-william-trost-richards/

https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.2710.html

New York Times article on Richards
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/arts/design/william-trost-richards-at-national-academy-museum.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

“William Trost Richards: American Landscape & Marine Painter” by Linda S. Ferber
https://archive.org/embed/williamtrostrich0000ferb (archive.org)

“Niagara” by Frederic Edwin Church
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.166436.html

Episode on the Corcoran Gallery 
“A Pastoral Visit”

Episode on Thomas Cole
“The Voyage of Life: Childhood”

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to A Long Look! I’m your host, Karen Jackson

Did you know most people spend only a few seconds looking at works of art? But what happens if you slow down and take a long look? Join me while I take you thru what I see and discover while looking at a work of art for minutes instead of seconds. Then I’ll share the history, mystery, or controversy behind it!

Ready? Then let’s head to the National gallery of art in Washington DC

MUSIC

Today’s episode is meant to be a soothing break from a long year and before the holidays kick in. 

So, sit back, relax, maybe pour a fave bev and join me for a long look at “On the Coast of New Jersey” by William Trost Richards.

If you want to follow along, you can find it at alonglookpodcast.com/jersey. When you get there, just click on the image to zoom in and pan around! 

So what do you first notice?

The luminous silvery tone washing across this beach scene. We’re looking at rippling surf under a massive sky stacked with blue-grey clouds filling this enormous oil painting. It’s about 6 ft wide by 3 ft high.

The ocean spans the lower half and it’s a blend of dark greys, olive green, and streaks of steel blue that becomes lighter as it angles away to the right. There’s a tan undertone from the sand being churned up and streaks and curlicues of white foam scatter across the surface. 

Richards positions us in the lower left and we’re looking out across the water and down the beach as they recede into the distance toward the right edge. 

Right in front of us where the water and sky are darker, a white seagull stands out against a bottle-green wave that rises and crests a little to our right. Way beyond the wave, a tiny, white three-masted schooner sails from left to right along a very sharp horizon line. Two more V-shaped seagulls soar overhead. After looking for a minute I realized there’s another even smaller, ghostly ship in the far distance.

Closer to us, gentle waves break and rush up from left to right onto the flat sand and the surf kind of piles up as it builds on that side. Those frothy sheets of water nudge a few clumps of brown seaweed in the lower right and roll toward a few incredibly detailed seashells. 

But here’s where Richards does something amazing. The beach isn’t some sandy, lumpy surface. The wet, flat sand and sheets of rushing water act like mirrors for the sky. They’re painted in pale silvery blue, dove-grey and white to reflect light coming from a kind of oval-shaped gap in the tall banks of puffy clouds, just right of center. Patches of blue sky peek out behind bands and wisps of glowing white clouds and just below that, are streaks of pale pink just over the horizon on the right. Light pours out of that opening and illuminates the water and churning surf below. The sun is there somewhere, we just can’t see it. 

One detail I love is how Richards puts this long, thin but heavy stroke of white along the horizon line right under that gap creating this eye-catching highlight that literally underlines it.  

The mood is very calm, peaceful. You can just image a slight breeze, the cry of the gulls, even the steady murmur and hiss of the surf.  

MUSIC

William Trost Richards was an American artist born in Philadelphia in 1833. He began drawing when he was young and grew up to become a designer for a metalworks company, designing things like ornate lamps, chandeliers, gas fixtures… Just think of all that fancy lighting you see in your favorite Victorian drama and you get the idea!

He studied art on the side, taking classes with an artist named Paul Weber who taught him a very detailed style of landscape painting. William was also influenced by the older generation of American landscape artists especially Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church who specialized in big, dramatic scenes of nature. 

In his early 20s, he traveled to Europe to broaden his art education and often worked with other Americans over there who were also interested in landscape painting. After a few years, he came back to Philadelphia, married Anna Matlack, a poet and playwright and started a family. 

Richards was a lot like Cole in that he believed landscapes could be morally uplifting to the viewer. He told a friend his goal was for landscape to “tell stories to the human heart and be a medium of noble and powerful countenance.”  

But he moved away from Cole’s grand, sometimes over-the-top approach and chose to paint his landscapes as accurately as possible. He had come across the idea that depicting an almost scientific level of detail was a sort of spiritual exercise, that it lead to “great truths” for the artist and viewer. And he wasn’t the only one: he belonged to a group of painters called the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art who all thought the same thing. 

Richards did pretty well painting landscapes but after several years, they lost their popularity so he switched to marine paintings like this. 

He had spent a lot of summers sketching beaches in Atlantic City and Cape May, which are close to Philadelphia, then traveling up the coast to Maine, stopping at different places to sketch their coastlines for new compositions. So he had plenty of inspiration. 

But there’s a story that Richards really got into marine painting when he experienced a stormy ocean voyage returning from Europe with his family. The power of that wild water really left an impression. He was so impressed that, according a New York Times article, he became fascinated by waves, that he would “wade in among them or stand on the beach, studying them for hours, until,” as one of his kids said, “people thought he was insane.”

His marine scenes were a hit and really made his reputation. He did well enough to build a family summer home with the ultimate ocean view–perched on a cliff in Newport RI. 

“On the Coast of New Jersey” was commissioned by the Corcoran Gallery in 1883. The Corcoran was an influential art museum in Washington DC and “Coast” was the biggest work Richards had ever done, He even called it the “big beach” in a letter to his daughter. 

The decision to go big might have been inspired by the monumental 7 ft-painting of Niagara Falls by Frederic Church which was also at the Corcoran, although Richards had seen it several years before.

The Corcoran Gallery was one of the first public art museums in America and its mission was to promote American artists. If you’d like to know more, check out the episode called “A Pastoral Visit.”

Anyway, when Richards painted this, he was getting toward the end of his career and starting to see work by the new generation of artists like James McNeil Whistler and Winslow Homer who were trying a looser, more abstract style. 

But he held onto his belief that realistic scenes of nature were a spiritual force for good. And the light and atmosphere he found in these coastal settings were part of that, they were really important to him. He described it as “The delight which I constantly feel in the beauty of air and sea.” 

OUTRO:

I hope you’ll try out a long look on your next museum visit! Just take a little time and let the art reveal itself.

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Thanks for joining me!