“MASSABESSIC,” BY MARY BRADISH TITCOMB, 1892.
An exhibition titled Summerings with Mary Bradish Titcomb, 1892-1902: Drawings of Coastal New England and the White Mountains will be on view at James L. Kochan Fine Art and Antiques at 75 Main St., Wiscasset, through Sept. 27.
Although she was also known as a portrait painter, Titcomb is best known for her impressionistic paintings of rural and coastal New England and was a member of the Boston Impressionists.
The Kochan Fine Arts exhibition features finished and preliminary drawings in graphite, watercolor and ink on paper from the first decade of Titcomb’s career.
The drawings on view were all executed while on summer holidays in New England, principally coastal Maine, including Ogunquit, Sebago Lake, Cape Elizabeth, Portland and Monhegan.
The exhibit also includes works featuring the White Mountains, the North Shore and Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Principally landscape and coastal views, the exhibition also includes some portraits and still lifes.
Born in Windham, New Hampshire, Titcomb began her artistic career teaching drawing in public schools in Brockton, Massachusetts. In 1888, she relocated to Boston to commence studies at the Boston Museum School under Boston Impressionists Edmund C. Tarbell and Frank W. Benson and later Philip Hale. During her early professional career, summers were spent drawing and painting in coastal Maine or the White Mountains near her birthplace.
In 1895, Titcomb traveled to Europe for the first time, studying with Jules Lefebvre in Paris, but returned to Boston, where she exhibited regularly with the Copley Society and in numerous national exhibitions.
Titcomb continued to summer along the New England coast, from the North Shore to Cape Cod, although she is known to have gone on a sketching trip to Arizona and Mexico in 1901. As she became more successful, she left her Fenway studio and purchased a home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where she died in 1927.
For more information, contact James L. Kochan Fine Art and Antiques, (304) 279-7714 or jameskochan@comcast.net.
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