Charles A. Watson (American, 1857 to 1923)
Charles A. Watson was a landscape and marine painter who spent his artistic career in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. His favorite subjects were the Chesapeake and Baltimore Bays at sunrise, sunset, or at moments when they were slightly obscured by fog or mist. His works have an unassuming tranquility, and possess a refreshing, straightforward quality, notably devoid of artificially picturesque devices.
Watson’s marine views are frequently composed from the shore – often the beach – and from a rather low vantage point. The result is a design constructed exclusively of horizontal bands of sand, water and sky, only occasionally interrupted by a vessel on the sea. The approach is curiously minimal and unanecdotal. It is also deceptively simple: his ability to convey spatial recession convincingly through accurately foreshortened waves and clouds is evidence of his firm academic training.
Watson studied with a number of notable Parisian-trained figures, among them Andre Castaigne, a pupil of Gerome, who distinguished himself as a successful portraitist and illustrator in his native France before coming to the United States where he established himself in New York and resided in Baltimore; and the Baltimore landscape painter Samuel Edwin Whiteman, who was a product of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he had studied with Boulanger, Constant and Lefebvre, and won a prize in the Paris Exposition of 1889.
Some of Watson’s later works show an awareness of Tonalism in their hazy paint application, where the evocation of mood is more important than a literal description of form. Watson preferred working on an intimate and sometimes miniature scale, which suggests in addition to his painterly manner and emphasis on light and atmosphere, that he worked outside directly in front of his subjects. With its ambitious palette of greens, blues and lavenders working in harmony, Bay of Baltimore is a testament to Watson’s considerable skill as a colorist.
Information courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries, June 2009.