Drying Racks on the Beach

In the early 1880's, at the beginning of his career, Dennis Bunker made a series of paintings of beaches and boats, working primarily along the north shore of Long Island in and around Port Jefferson. His method was academic-pencil sketches preceded studies in oil on canvas, each leading to a finished composition in oil, among them the MFA's Salt Marsh Landscape with Two Children near a Beached Sail Boat and Dory (1986.575). Drying Racks on the Beach is one such preliminary sketch. Quickly and characteristically painted in broad bands of light brown, green, and blue that delineates sand, foliage and sky, the scene is anchored by a large rotating device that was used to dry fishing nets.

Bunker’s work is rare (he died at age 29) and increasingly sought. The MFA has had a longstanding interest in his oeuvre, which came to full maturity during the artist's years in Boston in the late 1880s when he became an innovator of impressionism in the US. The first scholarly exhibitions of his paintings were held in the MFA in the 1940s; the most recent were in the 1994-5 display and publication Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist, Our collection includes six oils (three landscapes and three figurative works), a sketchbook, and a pencil study for an unrealized decoration. Drying Racks on the Beach adds depth to our holdings; as our only oil sketch, it provides an opportunity to study Bunker's working method with a subject clearly related to our early salt marsh landscape.