A Holiday

Edward Henry Potthast · c. 1915

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

76.4 × 101.8 cm (30 1/8 × 40 1/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Modernism

A Holiday captures the sun-drenched joy of a summer afternoon at the water's edge, with Potthast's signature crowd of bathers rendered in loose, luminous strokes that feel almost alive with movement. Edward Henry Potthast spent years studying in Munich and Paris before returning to America, where he found his true subject: ordinary people at leisure, particularly the beaches of New York. His Impressionist technique — broken colour, confident brushwork, and an instinctive feel for reflected light on water and skin — gave his beach scenes an immediacy that set them apart from the more formal figure painting of his era. Where many contemporaries laboured over detail, Potthast trusted the eye to complete the picture. Potthast exhibited widely during his lifetime, including at the National Academy of Design, though he remained somewhat understated in reputation compared to peers like Childe Hassam — a gap that art historians have since worked to close. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made to order on canvas, faithfully recreating the warmth, rhythm, and palette of the original held in the Art Institute of Chicago, so the life Potthast caught on a summer holiday a century ago can hang in your home today.