| Frederick J. Waugh | ||
| Birth Date: September 13, 1861 |
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| Death Date: September 10, 1940 Artist Gallery |
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| “The sea to my way of thinking should look like the sea”. Looked like the sea it did as Waugh practiced what he preached when painting the ocean.
Waugh was born on September 13, 1861, in Bordentown, New Jersey, into a family of practicing artists. His father, Samuel Bell Waugh, painted portraits of the leading personalities of the day; and his mother, Mary Eliza Young Waugh, created miniatures.
Waugh studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia where he was a student of Thomas Eakins. He didn’t begin painting the sea until he was thirty-two. Waugh’s interest in the sea began when he spent two years on the Isle of Sark in the English Channel in 1893. For the next thirteen years, he lived in St. Ives an din London, refining his skill as a marine painter.
Waugh returned to the United States in 1907 and established his home in Montclair, New Jersey. The public loved him. When visitors to the prestigious Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh were asked to vote for their favorite artist, they selected Waugh – not once, but five years in succession (1934-1939).
Absorbed by his beloved ocean, Waugh’s last 15 years were spent painting some of this finest works on Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
On a sad note:
In 1934, a painting by Frederick Waugh titled Surf in Moonlight was presented to the Little Civic Art Gallery of Canton for the permanent collection by Erwin Barrie of Grand Central Galleries in New York City. In 1936, Mr. Barrie approved its being placed in the Institute collection. In 1972, sorry to say, the first painting ever given to the collection was declared stolen. Over the years, we have kept notifying auction houses, galleries and conservators in hopes that someday this painting will be found and returned to the Museum.
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