Second Beach, Newport

Worthington Whittredge was one of the most artistically experimental painters of America's Hudson River school. A contemporary of other key school figures such as Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Frederic Edwin Church, Whittredge created landscapes that were still critically and popularly admired in the 1870s and 1880s, long after the earlier style had fallen out of fashion. Unlike many of his fellow painters, Whittredge had firsthand knowledge of European landscape painting, and he was especially receptive to the aesthetics of French Barbizon and impressionist art. In painting this radiant and freely brushed work, the artist demonstrated his mastery of these newer styles of landscape painting and also created one of the outstanding American landscapes of the era.

By the time Whittredge painted _Second Beach_, it had long been one of the favored recreational sites of wealthy Americans who built their lavish summer homes in the town of Newport, Rhode Island. Here we see fashionably dressed figures testing the waters and enjoying the splendors of a beautiful day; in the background a horse-drawn carriage ferries others from one end of the beach to the other. Stopped in time and fixed indelibly through the clarity of artistic vision, this scene was recorded by Whittredge with a sensibility that perfectly matched its ineffable beauty.