Willard Leroy Metcalf

William Macbeth, Inc., New York

Pauline French, Los Angeles (acquired from the above in 1924)

R.L. Skofield, Greenwich, Connecticut

New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., 1 February 1940, lot 48 (consigned by the above)

E. & A. Milch, Inc. (acquired at the above sale)

Richard York Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above in June 1993 by the present owner

In Across the Harbor, executed circa 1902, American artist Willard Leroy Metcalf depicts the blue waters of a harbor from the vantage point of a hillside, where a child wanders through the green meadows flanked by gray houses. Metcalf began his career in figure painting and illustration before turning his focus to landscape, quickly establishing himself among the foremost American Impressionists of his generation. Regarding his love of landscape painting, art historian Richard J. Boyle noted that although Metcalf “had a true affinity for it, a genuine feeling. He traveled a great deal to find terrain to satisfy his sense of place, finding what suited him best in the countryside of New England ... it was just right for Metcalf, who marshaled his skills and used the formal qualities of his art to depict that landscape and convey what he felt was its essence” (Elizabeth de Veer and Richard Boyle, Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf, New York, 1987, pp. 244-45). 

In Across the Harbor, Metcalf bathes the hillside and water in a clear, luminous light, his brushwork evoking both the stillness of the summer air and the quiet pulse of coastal life. The composition’s balance between the natural and the domestic–the wandering child, the clustered homes, the expansive sky–embodies his gift for translating a familiar scene into something timeless and poetic. Here, Metcalf distills the fleeting qualities of harbor light, meadow calm, and youthful solitude into a quietly resonant vision, one that reflects his place as a master of early twentieth-century American landscape painting.