Earlier in the month I bought at auction a painting by the Washington, D.C. painter Edgar Hewitt Nye (1879-1943):
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A plein air sketch (oil on canvas, 18″ x 22″, signed, lr, “E. Nye”, ca. 1920s), this bright landscape was untitled in the auction catalog and otherwise lacked information about its location. It looked familiar, though. The mystery was solved when I found a few souvenir postcards dating back to the early 1900’s when Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, was a popular tourist destination for day-tripping Washingtonians (who arrived there by railway) and Baltimoreans (who traveled by excursion ship). Edgar Nye was one such traveler. What he decided to capture on canvas was not the crowds attracted to the roller coaster and other boardwalk diversions, but an untouched stretch of Calvert Cliffs just to the south of the town. The cliffs are a fossil-rich, Miocene era formation stretching for 30 miles along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Calvert County, Maryland.
Here, then, on a summer day, just a short remove from the noise of the resort, we can imagine Nye walking down to the water’s edge. He finds himself in a place where the air is laden with moisture, where baby waves break softly on the beach. It is here the artist plants his easel in the sand and spends a few hours playing with colors.
He puts to shame the dull penny postcards.
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