Charles Webster Hawthorne

Charles Webster Hawthorne was a truly dynamic painter, his work balancing a guiding naturalism with aesthetic appeal. As Hawthorne stated in his 1938 guide Hawthorne on Painting, he strove to paint “something that makes [people] believe in the beauty and glory of human existence” (as quoted in Richard Mühlberger, Charles Webster Hawthorne: Paintings & Watercolors, New York, 1999, p. 91). When not painting, Hawthorne ran the Cape Cod School of Art, a summer school in Provincetown, Massachusetts which quickly grew into a leading artist colony for plein-air impressionism.

Hawthorne was born in Lodi, Illinois, though he spent most of his young life in Richmond, Maine, a small, forested town near the sea. His father, Joseph Jackson Hawthorne, worked as a seaman, captaining trading ships along the New England coast. Hawthorne showed few signs of artistic ambition in his youth; nonetheless, in 1890, he set out for New York City, determined to become a painter. He supported himself with odd jobs while taking night classes at the Art Students League of New York. In 1896, Hawthorne enrolled in the Shinnecock, Long Island summer school of William Merritt Chase, where he met his future wife, Ethel Marion Campbell, and became Chase’s personal assistant.

When Chase abruptly closed the school in early 1898, Hawthorne traveled to Europe, where he studied Titian, Rembrandt, and Frans Hals. Hals in particular made a strong impression on the young artist. After visiting the Frans Hals Museum in Zandvoort, Holland, Hawthorne wrote, “When I came here and saw the Hals, I was so overpowered with the brushwork, I couldn’t see anything else” (Hawthorne to Ethel Marion Campbell, 24 August 1898). Trained on both Chase’s painterly Munich School instruction and Old Master studies, Hawthorne developed his own, robust technique, which he would teach in Provincetown. Perhaps it was his childhood that drew Hawthorne to the small fishing village, with its familiar rugged beauty and salt air. Fascinated by the cape’s scenic beauty, Hawthorne would paint and run the Cape Cod School of Art until his death in 1930.