WATER WATER EVERYWHERE features a diverse group of American artists who found inspiration from their surroundings that, in these instances, include water. The exhibition opens February 19th and continues through April 15th.

The earliest works are from 1894. Robert Henri sketched Breton women along the canal in Concarneau, France and John Sloan etched the Schuylkill River, in which he “went out and drew directly from nature on the waxed plate, then came back to the studio to do the biting.”

The Massachusetts coastline is captured in 1915 by Charles Demuth’s fluid watercolor of beaches at Provincetown and by Sloan’s rugged Gloucester rocks, The Popples, 1917. The same locale is the subject for Milton Avery’s 1945 view of Roosting Seagulls in Lavender Sea. William Glackens’ The Headlands, Rockport, 1936 is a sophisticated and vibrant multi-figure composition. The rocks, boats and islands in the Maine waters are transformed through the Modernist visions of John Marin, William Kienbusch, John Heliker and Karl Schrag.

The urban waters of New York City are seen in drawings of the Central Park Lake by Edward Hopper and Gifford Beal. In 1934 Dorothy Dehner drew Governors’ Island and the Statue of Liberty from the Brooklyn Promenade and ten years later Joseph Stella also found inspiration in Brooklyn, looking towards another East River crossing, the Williamsburg Bridge. Carl Holty’s 1943 painting of the New York Harbor breaks down the subject in a Cubist-like fashion of cool blue and grey hues.

Contemporary artists in the exhibition are Catherine Drabkin and Robert Ohnigian.

Kraushaar Galleries is celebrating its 131st year in business.