Frederick Judd Waugh, 1861 - 1940: From Love to Knowledge - (original) (raw)

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FREDERICK JUDD WAUGH, 1861 - 1940: FROM LOVE TO KNOWLEDGE AN ARTIST'S JOURNEY

May 9 July 14, 2003

"To paint the sea, you must love it, and to love it, you must know the sea."

Frederick Judd Waugh

The mighty ocean surf pounds against powerful coastal rocks. This is the scene in many of Frederick Judd Waugh's famous paintings which reside in the collections of many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Many of Waugh's monumental marine paintings, such as Northeaster from the collection of Wichita State University's Ulrich Museum, are included in this exhibition.

The full range of Waugh's talents are considered in this retrospective exhibition. Waugh's life journey took him from Philadelphia to Paris to Provincetown and his work from all of these periods is what Curator Elizabeth Ives Hunter has chosen to explore in this exhibit.

Paintings from Waugh's early days, such as The Old Barn, of a simple, straightforward landscape shows his gifts for observation and design.

Repose, a nude study, shows the influence of his teachers at the Academy Julian in Paris, where they taught a revolutionary method of drawing for that time -- drawing from the inside out, with mass preceding the outline.

Waugh finally settled into Provincetown in the late 1920's.

Curator Hunter tells us that, "In every place he lived, Waugh designed and built his studioIn the painting Conclave we see the artist in his Provincetown studio The studio itself was built from timbers salvaged from wrecks and outfitted with all sorts of nautical hardwareThere was a balcony where Waugh wrote imaginative stories, a huge fireplace that would take four foot logs

"In those later years in Provincetown, Waugh used his prodigious memory and a lifetime's accumulation of sketches to paint some of his most powerful marines.

On a shelf below the studio window were a collection of rocks, large and small, which he would leave dry or wet with sea water, so as to be able to remember more clearly the look of rocks by the coast."

Elizabeth Ives Hunter was advisor to the R.H. Ives Gammel Studios Trust for 1981-2001 and curatorial advisor from 1992 2001. She has been Visiting Curator at the Maryhill Museum of Art from 2000 to the present, and a guest curator for this exhibit at the Cape Museum of Fine Arts. Ms. Hunter also gives lectures and is author of the book "Transcending Vision," with Gerald Ackerman and has written for American Art Review.

Ms. Hunter will be sharing her vast knowledge of Frederick Judd Waugh in her special gallery tours of this exhibition Tuesday, July 8 at 2 pm and Wednesday, July 9 at 11 am.

Editor's note: See additional information on this artist in a Frederick J Waugh.biography by Kristian Davies in his book Artists of Cape Ann: A 150 Year Tradition.

rev. 8/23/04

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