Brittany - Young Boy Contemplating The Sea – Signed A Harrison – Early 20th Century

Important marine scene, presenting a young boy, from behind, facing the ocean. The child holds a long train of seaweed on his shoulder. We can see a second child in the water. In the distance, a few sails and the coastline. The sky is full of clouds, typical of Brittany where Harrison lived.
Signed lower left.
Very good condition, some crackling, no visible restorations. Early 20th century frame, good condition, no missing pieces.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Harrison moved to Paris in 1879 and studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts under Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jules Bastien-Lepage as teachers. At the instigation of Robert Wylie, he went to Brittany, staying in Pont-Aven and Concarneau, painting landscapes, often maritime. His Castles in Spain attracted attention at the Paris Salon of 1882, as well as "In Arcadia" during the Salon of 1885. "Les Amateurs" won a medal in Paris during the Universal Exhibition of 1889. The painting is in the Musée d'Orsay . He is a member of the National Society of Fine Arts, the Royal Institute of Oil Color Painters of London, art societies of Munich, Vienna and Berlin, the American Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists in New York, etc. and decorated with the Legion of Honor. Thomas Alexander Harrison rented a dilapidated house near Beg-Meil on the south coast of Brittany every summer between 1883 and 1887. At the end of the summer of 1896, he was joined by the writer Marcel Proust and the composer Reynaldo Hahn. Every evening, he went to the dunes to admire the sunset over the ocean and watched the way the light played with the water: “We saw the sea turn successively blood red, purple, pearly with silver , gold, white, emerald green, and yesterday we were dazzled by an entirely pink sea speckled with blue sails. His reputation is based above all on paintings of seascapes such as The Wave (1885, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts), depicting long waves at the seaside, and large expanses of sea in poetic conditions of light and of color. Thomas Alexander Harrison appears to have been the inspiration for the character "C", in Proust's early novel Jean Santeuil, as well as for certain aspects of the character of Elstir, the painter, in In Search of Lost Time. His works have been the subject of numerous public sales, in Europe and the United States.

Work visible in the gallery (07240) ​​
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