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Summerings with Mary Bradish Titcomb, 1892-1902: Drawings of Coastal New England and the White Mountains will be on view at James L. Kochan Fine Art & Antiques, 75 Main St., Wiscasset, from August 31st to September 27th. Although listed as a portrait painter, Titcomb is best known for her impressionistic paintings of rural and coastal New England and is considered the most important woman artist of the Boston Impressionists.

The Kochan Fine Arts exhibition, with an opening reception during the Wiscasset Art Walk on Thursday, August 31, 5-8pm, features finished and preliminary drawings in graphite, watercolor and/or ink on paper from the first decade of Titcomb’s professional career. The drawings on view were all executed while on summer holidays in New England, principally coastal Maine (including Ogunquit, Sebago Lake, Cape Elizabeth, Portland, and Monhegan), the White Mountains, the North Shore, and Plymouth, Massachusetts. Principally landscape and coastal views, the exhibition also includes some portraits and still lifes.

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Born in Windham, New Hampshire, Mary Bradish Titcomb (1858-1927) began her artistic career teaching drawing in the Brockton, MA public schools. In 1888, she relocated to Boston to commence studies at the Boston Museum School under Boston Impressionists Edmund C. Tarbell and Frank W. Benson and later Philip Hale. During her early professional career, summers were spent drawing and painting in coastal Maine or the White Mountains near her birthplace. In 1895, Titcomb traveled to Europe for the first time, studying with Jules Lefebvre in Paris, but returned to Boston, where she exhibited regularly with the Copley Society and in numerous national exhibitions. Titcomb continued to summer along the New England coast, from the North Shore to Cape Cod, although she is known to have gone on a sketching trip to Arizona and Mexico in 1901. As she became more successful, she left her Fenway studio and purchased a home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where she died in 1927.

For more information about Mary Bradish Titcomb and the Summerings exhibition, please contact James L. Kochan Fine Art & Antiques, 304-279-7714 or jameskochan@comcast.net