Lure of the Sea: Masterworks of American Coastal Art

To me the sea is a continual miracle, The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them, What stranger miracles are there? -Walt Whitman, Miracles (1856)

For centuries, the American coastline has served as a wellspring of artistic inspiration and a site of personal enterprise that has helped define the national spirit. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as industrialization, expanding railroad networks, and westward migration dramatically reshaped America’s interior landscape, its coastal regions emerged as vital to the development of commerce, industry, and cultural exchange. Access to the sea offered individuals who invested in small craft an entrepreneurial opportunity. Likewise, bustling port cities drove maritime trade, shipbuilding, and fishing industries, while a growing naval presence underscored the sea’s strategic significance. At the same time, artists were drawn to the shore’s dramatic beauty, dynamic harbors, and poetic spaces of leisure and repose.

Lure of the Sea: Masterworks of American Coastal Art traces nearly 200 years of artistic engagement with the maritime world. Featuring more than eighty paintings, works on paper, and sculptures from 1830 to today, the exhibition considers the profound influence of coastal environments on American art and culture. Distinct themes examine the emergence of seascapes and emotionally imbued expressions of nature’s power, beauty, and allure, as well as the tradition of maritime art in depictions of historical vessels, events, and locales. Spanning diverse artistic styles and moments in time, Lure of the Sea explores the coast’s relationship to American industry, leisure, literature, and the emergence of artist colonies that coalesced along the shoreline, inspired by the interplay of land and sea.

This exhibition is drawn from the collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art and commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Museum’s landmark gift of coastal and marine art by collectors and longstanding supporters, Charles J. and Irene Hamm. Featuring masterworks from their donation alongside other works in the Museum’s distinguished holdings, Lure of the Sea illuminates the American coast as a realm of boundless artistic and human pursuit.

This exhibition is supported by the Bailey Family Fund For Special Exhibitions.