See Hawthorne's Artwork at Town Hall

Charles W. Hawthorne's painting Crew of the Philomina Manta

The painter Charles W. Hawthorne was pretty much the founder of the early art movement in Provincetown, establishing the Cape Cod School of Art here in 1899.
Most of Hawthorne's works that are probably familiar to the public seem to be those done in darker shades, depicting hard-working fishermen engaged in their daily activities, or often young boys going through their rights of passage into that same world.
Probably the best known of all of these paintings is found in the heart of Provincetown, at Town Hall. The Crew of the Philomina Manta hangs at the far end of the hallway that leads between the town offices, toward the Judge Welsh Room. Stop in and notice the perceptive way the artist gets the feelings of these men onto the canvas. The expressions on their faces, and Hawthorne's attention to detail, are remarkable.

Piano Lessen by Charles W. Hawthorne

I also recently found a number of his paintings of women engaged in more domestic pursuits like sewing, or looking after the children, or giving music lessons, but without seeming sexist or stereotyped. He portrayed people of all sorts, caught in moments of their daily routines, engaged in the activities that ran the lives of Provincetown residents in the early 1900s.
Here's a link to 24 Hawthorne Paintings I found on an absolutely amazing blog called It's About Time, where I began to discover paintings that portrayed women and children in the daily moments of their lives (not just the men) with a surprising number of wives, mothers, daughters, and young boys, wielding buckets of fish. It seemed that everyone here in the early twentieth century was involved in the industry that supported this little village and fed it as well, with fish as prominent characters in so many of Hawthorne's paintings.

Hawthorne's painting The Fishwife

In upcoming posts I'll bring you more of the remarkable character studies that are Hawthorne's works. I've unearthed dozens that I had never seen before, and I'll be sharing them with you on these pages. Meanwhile, stop by Town Hall and find the Hawthornes that grace the main hallway there, and enjoy the work of one of America's foremost artists and teachers.

An Afternoon at Captain Jack's Wharf

An artist paints the scene at Captain Jack's Wharf as kayakers prepare
for the launch into Provincetown Harbor from this popular Town Landing. 

Town Landings are found all along PTown's Commercial Street, providing public access to the beach on the edge of Provincetown Harbor. This spot is among the most popular of them all, at Captain Jack's Wharf in the West End of town.
Folks are often found here sunbathing or swimming on a summer's day, or picnicking at the edge of the water, or launching a kayak or raft and paddling out to Long Point. The kayaks of all the nearby neighbors are piled against the hedge, and on this day I found a couple of men dragging their little craft out of the heap and loading their gear into the hull, getting ready for an afternoon getaway into the harbor.
Meanwhile, a woman is painting one of PTown's most famous waterfront scenes. For years artists and photographers have been capturing a bit of the history of our early fishing fleet as well as that of one of our most illustrious summer visitors, who turned out to be one of the nations most well-known writers.
This little string of old fishing shacks and trap sheds has been a popular accommodation for visitors for years, operating these days as small condominiums rented out over the summer. One of these shacks was also rented long ago to Tennesse Williams, who spent many of the summers of the 1940s in Provincetown.
Although many disagree on exactly which of Williams' plays might have been written at various spots he occupied over those summers, we know that several parts of The Glass Menagerie, one of his best-known plays, were written, rewritten, and re-rewritten over a few of those summers, and many say that the play was finally finished during the summer he spent at Captain Jack's Wharf.

PTown Artists Paint Outdoors Thanks to Charles W. Hawthorne

It is not unusual at all here in Provincetown to see an artist working outdoors, even in the dead of winter. We are the oldest continuous artist colony in the nation, now in our 113th year as an ongoing "colony" of artists, if you will. It was 1899 when the Painter Charles W. Hawthorne founded the Cape Cod School of Art, of course, right here in Provincetown, and within several years there were about half-a-dozen bustling art schools here. Hawthorne established a studio on Miller Hill Road where he taught theories of light and its effects on color. He gave instruction to students outdoors near the harbor in the summers and spent his winters in Paris and New York.

Hawthorne was also a founding member of the Cape Cod School of Art in 1914. On August 27th, 1916, there appeared a front-page story in the  Boston Globe titled "Biggest Art Colony in the World in Provincetown." Norman Rockwell spent a summer studying with Hawthorne at the Art Students League in New York.
Hawthorne taught his students to paint en plain air, a French phrase meaning "in the open air." In the late 1800s the French figured out how to put paint in tubes that could be taken outdoors, allowing artists to move out of their studios and to paint in natural light. Before that time, paints were mixed in the studio, and artists worked only indoors. Hawthorne was seen as something of a revolutionary when he arrived here in 1899 and began teaching his students this new way of painting in the outdoors.
The art collection at Provincetown Town Hall includes the painting above, titled "Fish Cleaners." Visit Town Hall, at 260 Commercial Street, to see this painting for yourself.

Click to see other works of Charles W. Hawthorne.