The Lady in the Boat, 1920
Oil on canvas, 18 x 18”
Signed and dated lower left
The concept of an idyllic natural world and the ideal woman merged in the ideology of American Impressionism. Rarely, however, did landscape and lady blend so well as here, where solids and sunlight fuse into a single luminous veil.
A regular at Old Lyme in the 1910s, Greacen had studied with William Merritt Chase in Spain, then had spent several years in Giverny. Soon after painting this picture, Greacen founded the Grand Central Art Galleries and an affiliate school in New York City, which sent exhibitions of American art to many cities and trained hundreds of artists.