A contemporary American painter of rocks and sea who may be considered to
be in a sense a successor to Winslow Homer, is Paul Dougherty. He is
thoroughly American in spirit, and mainly self-taught. After a brief
career in the law, he turned to painting. With a knowledge of drawing and
perspective as a foundation upon which to proceed, he went to Europe where
he spent several years studying without masters in Paris, London,
Florence, Venice and Munich.
He returned to his native country more American than ever. Our artists,
he said, walked too near the sterile soil of eclecticism, deferred too
much to established codes. Like Winslow Homer, he scorned the nicer
subtleties of personal moods. He rejoiced in nature’s more vigorous
aspects and he looked at her impersonally, objectively. This passion for
puttmg things down as they are rather than using them as a means of
expressing his individual moods, is, curiously enough, the key to the
individual note which stamps his canvases. At the same time this literal
tendency seems to some critics to be his greatest weakness.
He has devoted himself almost exclusively to chronicling the moods of the
sea, to transcribing the profound surging billows, the swirling of eddies,
the resistless pounding of waves against cliffs, the dash of spray upward
into the light. A good example of these fresh sea-pieces is Moonlit Surf.
It is a comparatively recent work, and shows the sea striking against
rocks and sweeping into their crevices, while a warm moonlight, glancing
over the crests of waves, gives color.
[Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight. John S. Sargent, 1856-]