Frederick J. Waugh

(1861 - 1940)

Frederick J. Waugh was born in 1861, his father a noted portrait painter and his mother a miniaturist of much talent. At the age of 19 he entered the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and studied under Thomas Eakins. He traveled to study the old masters in Europe. Recalled to America by the death of his father, he settled in Philadelphia and devoted himself to portrait painting.

In 1892, he gave up his portrait work and went to live on the Island of Sark, an isolated, rugged island in the English Channel, whose great cliffs, fierce winds, and walls of rocks and waves inspired him to paint in the outside world. The painstaking study of color and form of waves, of the great laws that control the waters, enabled him to give us his magnificent marines which have made him famous.

From Sark, he moved to Cornwall, just outside St. Ives but, after fifteen years of absence from his own country, he returned to permanent residence in America. Soon after, he exhibited some of his marines in New York and Philadelphia where they attracted universal attention. To those who had known him only as a portraitist, he was at once placed as one of the great painters of the sea. Charles Curran says of his work, "One of the obvious facts connected with his technique is that there is a definite, well-understood purpose in every touch. He has grasped the entire effect...and with bold strokes swept it in with a freedom only equaled by the sea itself...This rare skill is the result of dexterity born of long experience" (The International Studio. February 1914. John Lane Company).

Feeling a strong urge to get away from Kent for a time on vacation, and wanting to renew his inspiration for marine paintings by direct contact with the sea, Waugh and his wife, in October of 1920, traveled aboard a steamer to the West Indies in the Caribbean where he painted the great white breakers and their bold green walls of water, ten feet high or more as they came crashing in. Weary of the somber grays of the rugged Maine coast, the far southern islands were more brilliant and the sea shone a transparent luminous green with stretches of fiery turquoise blue, darkened by the still deeper color of the jagged shoreline, betraying their dangerous presence.

The painting, "Caribbean" shows the huge rollers from across the open Atlantic, with the enormous push of the trade winds behind them piling up against the rocks in white foam and spray. It was painted in 1921, during Waugh's Caribbean trip. To save weight and space, Waugh had carried with him sheets of especially heavy Japanese paper which took oil paint perfectly without rotting or danger of disintegration. As a result, he brought home from this trip to the Caribbean an extraordinary body of firsthand seas pictures, which for "excellence and the sheer joy of workmanship, rank among his best achievements" (George R. Havens. Waugh: An American Marine Painter. Biography of Frederick J. Waugh. 1861-1940. Orono Press, MA. 1969).

A posthumous show of Waugh's "Paintings of the Caribbean" was held at the Grand Central Art Galleries from May 28 to June 14, 1946. A later show of his work was exhibited from March 2 to March 13, 1948 under the title, "Small Paintings from Nature by Frederick J. Waugh". On the back of the painting, "Caribbean" is the ticket from Grand Central Galleries. The ticket includes the number #2642 and the writing, "Frederic J. Waugh the Caribbean painted from the sea direct" and the price $350. This painting is also featured  in the book, "Frederick Waugh: Paintings of the Sea" by Walter Foster. The painting, "Caribbean" is one of  60 full color reproductions, shown on page 29. The name "Caribbean" and the size, "12" x16" is named under the painting. Painted in oil on Japanese paper and mounted on canvas board this painting is a magnificent original work of Waugh's direct contact with the sea. He counted on returning to the islands to paint more paintings but never did. This painting, as Havens described is, "an extraordinary sea picture".

 

Caribbean 11.5" X 15.5" Oil on Japanese Paper mounted on canvas board SOLD Ca.. 1921