(New York, NY) Hawthorne Fine Art is pleased to present Town, Field and Brush: Women Impressionists Paint New England. The exhibition will be on view (by appointment) September 8-October 30, 2026, at the gallery’s new Upper East Side location at 155 East 55th Street. The exhibition will feature more than a dozen works in oil and watercolor by historic women artists who sought artistic inspiration in New England’s rural farmlands and scenic coastline and who were active participants in the region’s art colonies including Old Lyme, Cos Cob, Provincetown and Ogunquit.

Among the work to be shown is High Street Newburyport, Mass.,1921 by Felicie Waldo Howell (1897-1968). Notable for her paintings of old Salem doorways and historic New England architecture, Howell was just 24 years of age when she captured this residential New England Street in autumn compelling the prominent artist and art critic Hamilton Easter Field to write:

Felice Waldo Howell has the gift of sight. She actually sees, and sees so clearly that when she paints a scene at Newburyport you know that it is not Salem. Just what distinguishes Salem from Newburyport, I do not know, but I do know that Miss Howell grasps realities so well that she gives you the flavor of each place so that the distinctive features would be evident to anyone at all familiar with the towns. She also gives you beauty. Beauty and truth, what more, pray, do you want?[1]

Olive Parker Black’s (1868-1948) Early Autumn Meadow depicts a stream coursing through a green meadow below a blue cloud-filled sky. White houses can be viewed between green, yellow and earth-colored trees in the background. The Cambridge, Massachusetts born artist studied under William Merrit Chase and H. Bolton Jones. The influence of the latter can be seen in much of Black’s work in both the handling and the subject matter. Black and Jones shared a preference for painting the streams and fields found near South Egremont, Massachusetts where they both kept summer cottages.

The first woman president of the Providence Art Club, Mabel Woodward (1877-1945) was born in Providence, Rhode Island. She was an 1896 graduate and long-time faculty member of the Rhode Island School of Design. She studied under William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League and under Charles Herbert Woodbury at the Ogunquit Summer School of Drawing and Painting in Maine. Woodward’s Portsmouth Harbor, 1917 captures figures tending to a small skiff on the beach while laundry dries on lines between waterfront architecture. The bell tower of historic St. John's Episcopal Church can be seen in the distance.

Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) was recognized for her masterful portraits of prominent society members such as Mrs. Isaiah Stetson, 1893 for which she was awarded the Dodge prize for best picture by a woman artist at the National Academy of Design’s Sixty-Eighth Annual Exhibition. The Philadelphia-born-artist began her training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. During the 1880’s, she visited Cape Ann with her family and later built “Green Alley,” a home studio in East Gloucester. A native of Brunswick, Maine, the sitter’s father was the oldest printer in the state, and her husband was a mayor of Bangor, Maine.

Breta Longacre’s (1887-1923) Shoreline with House captures a spring day in coastal New England. The younger sister of artist Lydia Eastwick Longacre (1870-1951), Breta Longacre exhibited with the Lyme Art Colony in 1914 and 1915. A watercolor and pastel, Palmer & Duff Shipyard, Cos Cob by Carolyn Cambell Mase (1858-1948) depicts a favorite subject of the Cos Cob Colony artists including, most notably, Childe Hassam. A student of John Henry Twachtman, Carolyn Campbell Mase (1858-1948) resided at the Bush-Holley House in Greenwich, Connecticut.

In View of Penobscot Bay by Mary Lane McMillan (1883-1976), a prominent tree arches over the bay. A smokestack from what may be the Bucksport Mill, a paper mill built in the 1930’s, can be seen in the distance beyond the forked tree branches. An artist and illustrator, McMillan established The McMillan School of Fine Arts and during the 1920’s and 1930’s offered summer sessions at her summer home in Belgrade Lakes, Maine.

Work by Anna Mary Richards Brewster (1870–1952) Laura Coombs Hills (1859–1952), Carolyn Campbell Mase (1858-1948), Mina Fonda Ochtman (1862-1924) will also be included.

About Hawthorne Fine Art:

Hawthorne Fine Art is a Manhattan based fine art gallery specializing in 19th and early 20th century American painting. Town, Field and Brush: Women Impressionists Paint New England is available for viewing by advance appointment at 155 East 55th Street. For more information or to make an appointment, please contact info@hawthornefineart.com. To access the full-color exhibition catalogue, please visit our website and click to download a digital copy: https://hawthornefineart.com/catalogues.

[1] Hamilton Easter Field “Felicie Waldo Howell,” The Arts Vol. 2, No. 2 (December 1921): 178.