Autumn has set in along an Eastern waterway, where Edward Henry Potthast has taken solace and is looking distantly at a group of people picnicking on their momentary escape from the city. There is also a solitary boater and the birds alluded to in the title. The painting is titled and signed on the stretcher bar with the inclusion of the artist's New York home studio address, 222 W. 59th Street. Potthast frequented Central Park and the beach shores of the East Coast, but we believe here he has ventured north up either the Hudson or Mystic River, with the fall colored foliage thick upon the higher elevations backing the scene.
Potthast is one of the more important American Impressionists, with his international education and exposure, and his recognition with his home town audiences in Cincinnati, New York and through America for his landscapes, beach scenes and important works of the Grand Canyon. This is an excellent work to illustrate his blending of the traditional Munich School of Painting, with the use of technical detail and deep tones on which his Cincinnati beginnings were based, with the emerging light and freedom of the French Plein Air teachings, of which Potthast was one of the earliest American proponents.
Cool reflections on the pond show his excellent eye for color subtleties, and the brief sliver of blue sky is still full of clouds, adding yet another well thought out level to this waterside landscape with people at leisure.
