Surf and Fog, Monhegan, Maine
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A wall of pale green-white surf crashes toward the viewer through a gap in dark, wet rocks. The rocks are painted thickly in grays and blue-blacks, their surfaces slick and angular, while the wave behind them rises in a massive curtain of foam and spray, luminous and pale against a gray sky. The fog flattens everything beyond the breakers into a uniform gray-green. Waugh was an American painter who became one of the most commercially successful marine artists of the early 20th century. He painted on Monhegan Island off the Maine coast, where the surf breaks directly onto granite ledges, and his best work captures the weight and force of the water without overly romanticizing it.