When Peterson’s foreign travels were curtailed during WWI, and when she was not spending her summers exploring the coastal artists’ colonies in New England, the artist found plenty of inspiration among New York City’s bustling streets and gritty waterfront. Boats at a New York Dock demonstrates her facility with the gouache medium; she intuitively used negative space and the paper’s natural brown color to her advantage to delineate the wharf, and applied color only sparingly to depict the rippling blue water and the aged patina of the ships moored nearby.

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Provenance:

Tom Veilleux, Portland, Maine

To private collection, Brookline, Massachusetts, 2004 to present

Inscription:

1. (verso of paper in ink) Phila. W.C. Club 1916
2. (Verso of paper in pencil) Boats at a NY Dock