A Gallagher Moment

Lisa N. Peters

In the middle of our last 8 am (groan) staff meeting, Ira Spanierman, who was conducting the meeting, rose from his chair mid-sentence. Looking toward the wall of the gallery to his left, he seemed elsewhere for a moment, and then said: “THAT is a really beautiful watercolor!” Even though Sears Gallagher’s Pine Trees and Coastline, Monhegan, Maine has been in our inventory for a while, and even though hundreds of watercolors have passed through the gallery over the years, this one struck a nerve for Ira. It was as if he was seeing it for the first time and in doing so momentarily left the work day behind to imagine being in this peaceful natural place. Those of us who could crane our necks to see this image felt similarly.

What I think Gallagher caught in this watercolor, and in others, is a sense of places and times when being in nature is comfortable, calming, and pleasurable. Here we can imagine coming out of a thick woods to an open sunlit ledge, with grooves perfect for sitting and relaxing. There is just the right level of warmth: the temperature is not too hot, the sunlight not too bright. Pine trees rising in front of us provide shelter and imply safety from the steep drop to the water’s edge, but instead of blocking our view, their forms are spare and leafy enough that we can see through and around them to the sea. The composition probably prompted Ira’s comment also. The vertical arrangement is a golden section, with the trees measuring approximately double the height of the rocky ridge. The scene’s feeling of harmony evokes the truth of Pythagoras’s “music of the spheres.”

Gallagher’s handling is varied, moving between broad translucent washes and tighter, Impressionist dabs. The seeming effortlessness of his method matches the expression of satisfaction in the outdoor life that I believe was what he was after in his art. (There must have been a reason, after all, that he spent “50 summers” on Monhegan Island.)

It would be interesting to compare one of Gallagher’s Monhegan watercolors with one of Edward Hopper’s, created at the same time, to consider how the artists’ visions of life translated into the way they saw and depicted the world around them. Whereas Hopper’s images so often have a subtle uneasiness, Sears Gallagher’s so often have a subtle sense of ease.