Nicholas Brewer (American, 1857-1949). Oil on board landscape titled “On the Beach,” depicting a rocky beach scene on Laguna Bay, 1921. Signed along the lower left.

Lot Essay: Born in a log cabin in Minnesota in 1857, Nicholas Brewer’s work typifies his frontier spirit and love for the American landscape. He grew up on a farm, where his days were defined by hard work, but he still found the time to draw and paint in between chores. At the age of 18, he moved to St. Paul. He received some art training there from Henry Koempel, a local painter and decorator, and ended up marrying Koempel’s daughter. He eked out a living for his swiftly growing family through portrait commissions and teaching. In 1885, Brewer first traveled to New York, determined to make it as a serious artist. He received a small amount of training there; however, he remained primarily self-taught. He began receiving some success in New York, and continued spending winters there for much of his career. His work was included in several exhibitions, and he was inducted into the illustrious Salmagundi Club. In his later career, he traveled the United States, giving traveling lectures and exhibitions, as well as taking portrait commissions wherever he went. During one productive visit to Washington D.C., Brewer even painted a portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The main reason for his travels, though, was his love of the American landscape. Although Brewer was never able to fully make a living by landscape painting, it remained his true passion. His agrarian upbringing left him with a sense of reverence for the earth, and he delighted in experimenting with colors and textures to best capture the mood of a landscape. He paid particular heed to the flora he passed by, from the solemn Minnesota prairie grasses to southern blue bonnets to the tiny patches of scrub grass clinging to vertiginous California cliffs. His paintings rarely depict specific places; Brewer instead preferred to paint landscapes that he felt represented an ideal, more the spirit than the actuality of a location. Nevertheless, his travels provided him with a rich backdrop upon which to base his works.

“On the Beach” depicts the shore around Laguna Beach, painted during Brewer’s 1921 visit to California. The landscape is rendered in swift, sweeping brush strokes, providing an impression of the movement of the scene, from the waves out to sea to the calm water in the small inlet depicted. The jagged rocks are made up of highly textured layers of paint, and the texture of the pebbly beach is evident in the thicker deposits of paint along the water’s edge. Thin strokes of green around the rocks and the water suggest clumps of slick seaweed washed up on the shore. The viewer can almost feel the texture of the beach under their feet just by looking at the painting.

The sense of intimacy in the painting, encouraged by its scale, is strengthened by the composition. The composition also contributes to the calm solitude: the small pool, tightly framed by expanding semicircles of craggy rock, feels hidden from the outside world. Coupled with the lack of figures, a characteristic aspect of Brewer’s landscapes, it creates the feeling of having stumbled upon a secret cove, exclusively shared by painter and viewer.

Unframed: height: 10 in x width: 14 in.
Framed: height: 14 3/4 in x width: 19 in.