Boats at Rest
c. 1895
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
66 × 91.4 cm (26 × 36 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
121377
Art Historical Context
Arthur Wesley Dow's *Boats at Rest* (c. 1895), an oil on canvas measuring 26 × 36 inches, captures a serene harbor scene in the tradition of American Tonalism. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Arts the Americas department, this painting showcases Dow's early mastery of subtle atmospheric effects, with boats gently moored against a hazy shoreline. The large-scale canvas invites viewers into a quiet moment of respite, evoking the calm rhythms of coastal life. Dow (1857–1922), a pivotal figure in American art education, drew inspiration from James McNeill Whistler and Japanese woodblock ...
About the Artist
Arthur Wesley Dow · 1857–1922
Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) was an American artist, printmaker, and educator whose ideas about composition and design exerted an outsized influence on American modernism, reaching well beyond anything his own paintings and prints might have achieved on their own. Born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, he studied in Boston and then in Paris at the Académie Julian, where he absorbed the academic training...