Potthast, Edward Henry
(1857-1927)

Born Ohio, 1857
Died New York, 1927

As a young artist, Edward Henry Potthast was influenced by the Munich School through his instructors and his own studies there, and his work is characterized by the darkened tonalities of 19th-century German and Netherlandish Academic painting. As a Cincinnati artist, Potthast’s early style might have become entrenched but for travel to France in the 1880s. Converting to Impressionism, he immediately lightened his palette. In 1909, he began producing the seaside scenes for which he is best-known. Seemingly painted without effort, these works are sophisticated color compositions based in the solid underpinnings of his academic foundations.

The son of German artisans, Potthast at twelve became a charter student of Cincinnati’s new McMicken School of Design, where he studied off and on for a decade. With the encouragement of his mentor, Thomas Satterwhite Noble, he traveled to Antwerp and Munich in 1881 with fellow artist Joseph Henry Sharp. Because of its large German population, Cincinnati had strong cultural ties to Munich, and its leading artists, such as John Henry Twachtman and Frank Duveneck, taught alternately in both cities. Finishing his European journey, Potthast visited Paris and briefly studied at the Academie Julien.

Back in Cincinnati, he made his living as a lithographer. In 1886, Potthast returned to Paris and studied with Fernand Cormon. A few years later, he went with Robert Vonnoh and Roderic O’Conor to Grez, a popular destination for French landscape painters. Upon seeing Impressionist paintings, he introduced their use of color to create atmosphere, sun, and shadows into his own work. The transformation placed his work in the exhibition "Light Pictures" at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where he was the only American included.
In 1895, Potthast moved to New York, where he established a studio overlooking Central Park. With steady work from "Scribner’s," "Harper’s," and other popular publications, he also became a major figure exhibiting in prominent institutions, such as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago. Starting in 1897, he established his place in the National Academy of Design, where he was elected associate and then full academician.

A visit to a 1909 exhibition at the Hispanic Society of the work of Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida inspired his turn to seaside scenes. Travel to eastern locations, such as Gloucester, Rockport, Cape Cod, Ogunquit, and Monehegan, afforded him the opportunity to observe the effects of late afternoon summer light on water and sand. Potthast could also view the leisure class at their shoreline activities. In these paintings, the artist masterfully arranged warm against cool colors, favoring rich shades of cobalt of vermillion. With slight tonal difference between light and shadow, Potthast included reflected light. Using thick and opaque paint, and he suggested figure groupings, especially children at play, with just a few considered strokes.

Although associated with his seaside scenes, Potthast was among those who traveled to the Grand Canyon in 1910, along with Thomas Moran, in atrip sponsored by the Santa Fe Railroad.

Works Held: the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Art Institute of Chicago; Cincinnati Art Museum; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

Memberships: Allied Artists of America; American Water Color Society (1895; Brd. of Directors); Art Club of Philadelphia (1898); Cincinnati Art Club (1891); Dragonfly Club, Cincinnati (1886-1889); Fine Arts Federation of NY (1910-1917); League of American Artists; Lotus Club (life member, 1912); National Arts Club, life member; National Academy of Design, ANA 1899 and NA 1906; N.Y. Water Color Society; N.Y. Society of Painters; Painters & Sculptors Gallery Assoc.; Salmagundi Club; Soc. of American Artists; Soc. of Men Who Paint the Far West (1911-20); Society of Western Painters (1897-1898); Societe des Artistes, Paris.

Further Reading: James M. Keny and Nannette V. Maciejunes, "Triumph of Color and Light: Ohio Impressionists and Post-Impressionists," exh. cat., Columbus Museum of Art, 1994, 25, 120-121; "Edward H. Potthast NA 1857-1927," exh. cat., Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1973; James M. Keny, "Into the Light: The Art of Edward Potthast," Timeline (April-May 1991); and Karl J. Moehl, Edward Henry Potthast, exh. cat., Peoria, Illinois, Peoria Art Guild of Lakeview Center for the Arts and Sciences, 1967.

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