Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
William Trost Richards

Seascape with Distant Lighthouse, Atlantic City, New Jersey

1873
Oil on canvas.
29.9 x 50.8 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1981.58
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
William Trost Richards first established his reputation as a painter of wooded landscapes in the style of his early teacher Paul Weber. By 1858 he began a study of Pre-Raphaelitism, at first probably on his own and subsequently in conjunction with a group of painters in New York City who had begun to follow the work of the English Pre-Raphaelite movement and the writings of John Ruskin. In 1863 the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art was formed, which included Richards as a member. They met as a group only a few times, but the movement was sustained by the publication of their journal New Path (published May 1863 to December 1865). Its most enduring legacy, however, was the pictures they produced, which gave visual form to Ruskin's insistence on "truth to nature" in their near-photographic accuracy and topographical correctness. Critical responses to Richards's work in this vein were mixed; initially they found the minute accuracy impressive, but over time they began to question a literalness that bordered on imitative.

In the 1870s the coast and the sea became his new themes. Seascape with Distant Lighthouse, Atlantic City, New Jersey is an early manifestation of this love of the ocean. The similarity in conception and painterly touch between this work and James Hamilton's contemporaneous Beach at Atlantic City (Private Collection) suggest that they may have sketched together along the Jersey shore, and underscores the enduring importance for Richards of the art traditions of his native Philadelphia. Around this time also he began to experiment with other techniques, especially watercolour, and joined the American Watercolor Society in 1874. Work in this medium may have encouraged his observation of the fleeting effects of light on the water, and the breaking waves, and thus led to a loosening of his stroke. In this canvas, for example, a range of brushwork is evident, from the carefully finished passages in the open water to the more painterly treatment of the cresting waves.

Seascape with Distant Lighthouse is organised around tautly drawn and measured underpinnings. All of the seascape elements -the horizon line, the frothy wave at the sand's edge, and lines of breaking waves further off shore- seem to converge upon a single vanishing point at the left, marked by the lighthouse. This deliberate linear arrangement focuses the viewer's attention on the distant form which can be identified as Absecon Light still standing in Atlantic City. Its distinctive red and white bands were painted in 1872, the year before the picture, in order to increase its effectiveness as a day-mark. The structure is of some historic importance, built in 1854 in what was then a lonely seacoast village called by the Indian name Absegame and one of the popular lights along the Eastern seaboard.

The marines Richards first began to paint in earnest in the 1870s preoccupied him for the remainder of his career. A trip to Great Britain from 1878 to 1880 afforded the opportunity to tour its changing coastline from England and the west of Ireland to the Channel Islands, where the scenery was recorded for future works. By 1881 he had returned to the United States and begun construction of Graycliff, his new house in Newport, Rhode Island. He could then observe from the windows of his own home the sea in its ever-changing moods: his unfailing source of artistic inspiration.

Katherine E. Manthorne

19th Century19th Century. North American Painting. LuminismPaintingOilcanvas
Listen
Download image Print page

Products and publications

Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

Catalogue Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Old Painting (English)

80.00 € 25.00 €

Delaunay, Sonia

Delaunay, Sonia

17.00 €

Poster Richard Estes. Nedick's, 1970

Poster Richard Estes. Nedick's, 1970

12.50 €

Klee socks

Klee socks

13.50 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

Francis A. Silva
Francis A. Silva
Kingston Point, Hudson River
ca. 1873
Martin Johnson Heade
Martin Johnson Heade
Jersey Marshes
1874
Sanford Robinson Gifford
Sanford Robinson Gifford
Near Palermo
1874
Hugh Bolton Jones
Hugh Bolton Jones
Summer in the Blue Ridge
1874
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
Seascape with Distant Lighthouse, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Marina con faro, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1873
Seascape with Distant Lighthouse, Atlantic City, New Jersey
William Trost Richards

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación.

Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use:

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación. In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images authorized by the Fundación must be accompanied by the following mention: Author's name. Title, Date © Coleccion Carmen Thyssen.
  • The user will send to the Museum Photo Library one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotografico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
Seascape with Distant Lighthouse, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Marina con faro, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1873
Seascape with Distant Lighthouse, Atlantic City, New Jersey
William Trost Richards

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The Photo Library of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works of the Carmen Thyssen Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialised publications, you should contact the Photo Library by email at the e-mail: @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail: @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022