Alex Katz

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This is one of a series of paintings from the late 1990s exploring the sparkling summer light of the Penobscot, Maine coastline. Katz painted these beach scenes 'en plein air' at both sunrise and sunset. Although based in New York, he has been painting the American landscape since the 1950s, often inspired by summers spent in Maine. Katz is well-known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and unmodulated colours are now seen as precursors of Pop Art. Small oil paintings such as this one are sketched from life and often intended to be scaled up into larger works, but their economic execution and visible brushstrokes reveal an intimate side to his practice. He says, "A sketch is very direct. It is working empirically, inside of an idea."

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