Walter Granville-Smith

(1870-1938)

For Impressionist artists, it’s hard to beat a beach scene for a composition that’s filled with color, texture, and great subjects to paint. Granville-Smith was a very successful illustrator from the 1900s to 1930s, but like many of the era, time off in the summer provided opportunity for pure easel painting and freedom from the rigors of illustration dead- lines. Granville-Smith did a number of beach coastal theme images on Long Island during the summer. In 1980, I was in New York on home leave with my family preparing for relocation from Australia to Germany and visiting as many galleries as I could. While in Graham Gallery’s second floor, the door was open to the storage room, and I noticed about a foot or so of a painting protruding from the racks. Clearly it was a marine—in fact, it looked like a Potthast. I had to see it. I was blown away by the piece: the biggest, best and most ambitious example by the artist I had ever seen. I bought the piece (and quietly neglected to tell my wife) and arranged to have it shipped to Hamburg, Germany. This seemed only to delay the inevitable, which came when a wood crate the size of a pool table top arrived at our temporary living quarters in Germany. It ended up stacked behind a sofa as a daily reminder that I perhaps should have discussed it first… in New York.