TitleCoast Scene
Artist
Lockwood de Forest
(American, 1850 - 1932)
Date1892
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 21 × 30 in.
SignedSigned lower left: "L. de Forest / 1892"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, January 9, 1899
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number335-P
Label TextOn December 12, 1898, de Forest, an Academician-elect, wrote to the Council: [block quote:]
I beg leave to present to the Academy one of my pictures "The Coming Wind on the Nile, Egypt" in conformity with Article 4, Sec. 4 of the Constitution. I hope to have the privilege of exchanging it for a larger and more important work when the Academy is suitably housed and has the space to show its pictures. I feared that anything larger would be in the way now.
[end of block quote]
At the time of de Forest's letter, the Academy's building on Twenty-third Street had been sold, and its temporary structure on Cathedral Parkway had not yet been planned, let alone built. The Council apparently agreed to his proposal, for the picture was soon officially accepted, on January 9, 1899. Although not officially recorded, the present painting must have been exchanged for the Egyptian scene prior to the publication in 1911 of the collection inventory, in which de Forest's picture is listed as Coast Scene.
Although painted in 1892 (presumably for his March exhibition at Avery's Art Galleries in New York), Coast Scene was worked up from a double-leaf drawing the artist made in 1876, at the Mediterranean port of Jaffa. The usual debarkation point for travelers to Palestine, Jaffa offered several legendary and historic tourist sites; Westerners, however, eager to start for Jerusalem, rarely stayed there long. De Forest arrived by ship on March 8, 1876, the day he made the drawing, but left the next morning for Jerusalem (de Forest to Palmer).
The painting is quite faithful to the drawing, reproducing the simple, expansive sweep of coastline that poignantly culminates in the lone Arab figure. On the distant horizon, however, de Forest articulated a row of tiny palm trees, some sailboats, and several white towers and buildings, elements not clearly indicated in the sketch. That de Forest intended his Holy Land studies to be seeds for later works, such as Coast Scene, is clear from a letter he wrote after leaving Jaffa: "I have made just enough sketches to be able to paint from any of them in case I should want to" (de Forest to Palmer).
1857
