Harriet Randall Lumis 

(1870-1953) 

This woman artist has been described with words like “determined,” “hardworking,” and “always learning and trying to improve.” She clearly produced a lot of work between 1898 until after the Depression, when her work and place in the art world began to diminish. Indicative of her continuous desire to learn and improve, she joined Hugh Breckinridge’s summer classes in Rockport, Massachusetts, in 1920, and at the age of fifty was the oldest student at the time. The R.H. Love Gallery obtained a large quantity of her work in 1977 and initiated an exhibition and catalogue that certainly brought her work to my attention. Lumis’ traditional landscapes are very solid, but I gravitated toward her coastal harbor images and purchased this small Gloucester painting in 1998 at Skinner’s Auction. The scene is at sunset, creating subtle, shadowy building walls and a silhouetted skyline with an almost imperceptible outline of a tugboat nestled in its docking space.