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About Edward Potthast
Born in Cincinnati, Potthast (1857-1927) received his earliest training in lithography, then he studied under Thomas S. Noble at the McMicken School of Design. In 1882, he went to Antwerp where he would have met John Leslie Breck, but like most Cincinnati art students, he went on to Munich to study in the Royal Academy. On a second trip to Europe, Potthast worked at GrPz-sur-Loing in the Fontainebleau Forest where he painted in the tonalist manner, however with loose, Munich School brushwork. At GrPz, both Robert W. Vonnoh and the Irish painter Roderic O’Conor influenced Potthast’s impressionism, then in Paris, Potthast’s works were accepted at the Salons of 1889 to 1891.
Potthast soon established his favorite subject, typical of the holiday spirit of American impressionism: usually a mother and children splashing in ankle-deep water at the beach, as in Woman and Children on the Beach, in which the brightly clad figures contrast rhythmically with the abstract complexity of the surrounding water. The pigment was daringly applied here, creating an unusually varied texture of the canvas surface. This painting is an outstanding example of Potthast’s colorful impressionist imagery, full of sparkling sunshine. Everything is in motion from the dynamic waves to the frolicking figures, even the two sailboats in the distance. |
Paintings by Edward Potthast
| Beach Scene |
| oil on panel: 9 x 14 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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| Rushing Stream |
| oil on panel: 12 x 16 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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| Cloud Scene |
| pastel on paper: 8 x 12 inches |
| signed: lower right |
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