Oscar Anderson - The Cooley Gallery - American Impressionism, Hudson River School

Anderson was born in Gotland, Sweden in 1873 and immigrated to the United States circa 1900. He began his career away from the coast in Hartford, Connecticut, where he studied with the well-known painter, Charles Noel Flagg (1848-1916). In 1908, he moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts, and joined the company of Cape Ann Colony artists. Consequently, he began a career as a coastal painter in earnest. Anderson is best known for his depictions of the Massachusetts coastline, which capture the moods and relationships of land and sea. In Evening on the Marshes, the artist uses heavy impasto and rich color palette to create the glowing effect of the illuminated marshlands. The foreground consists of broad vertical strokes of color that give the landscape an expansive quality. The marshes meet a group of rolling hills in the distance, poetically decorated with the same shades of pink and blue found in the evening sky above.

Anderson was active in arts organizations throughout his life as a founder of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, and the first vice president of the Gloucester Society of Artists the year it formed in 1922. He subsequently served for many years as the organization’s president. Anderson died at the age of 80 and is remembered as a talented painter and leader in the Cape Ann Art Colony.

Provenance: From the trade to the gallery.

Bibliography: Cooley Gallery archives.