Arts Column: Did this oil painter make a sneaky trip to Bermuda?

Dating artwork is a funny thing. Although you endeavor to be absolutely precise and try to do due diligence as far as accuracy regarding the work, there is always the margin for error due to misinformation, foggy memory and typographical error. Such is the case of the oil painting by Edmund Greacen, Bermuda Dock.  

The painting is signed by Greacen and dated 1911 with his distinct signature. However, in going through some of his personal correspondence, his daughter stated, “My father never painted in Bermuda and as far as I know, he was only there on the course of a cruise he took with my mother in 1938.” Hum. Did he make a clandestine trip to the island? 

He had married Ethol Booth in 1904 and they travelled first to Spain with the legendary “father” of American Impressionism, William Merritt Chase and a dozen other students and in 1907 moved to Giverny, France to be near Claude Monet and struck up a friendship with Monet’s stepdaughter Suzanne and her American artist husband, Theodore Butler. By 1910, the Greacens had moved back to the United States and settled in the artist colony in Old Lyme Conn. It was here he painted some of his loveliest landscapes and continued to paint “portraits” of formal gardens of the wealthy- for which he gained a good reputation.

 It is just an assumption, but given that many of his colleagues in Old Lyme made frequent visits to Bermuda  —notably, Clark Voorhees, Will Howe Foote and William Chadwick had homes on the island at this time and since they were known for their conviviality and camaraderie, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Greacen made the trek to Bermuda in 1911 to experience in person the light, foliage and architecture which drew his fellow artists. In any event, Bermuda Dock is typical of the tonalist work he was producing at this time with its soft blues which blended into greens and delicate suggestions of a distant shoreline. 

Elise Outerbridge is curator at Masterworks.