I love a seascape, and an oil painting on wood panel, and even better a a serene one with luminous golden and pink sky. Really a lovely one to live with a think, imparting both a sense of calm and of the miraculous! Signed E.C. Clark '99 at lower left corner--which makes me especially happy as it thus feels a bit of a metaphor, too, for the sunsetting of one century and the dawning of the next!
11 5/8" x 9 1/8” and in very good condition, with a bit of minor wear to lower left corner of the panel and one minor surface scratch at right at the top of the rocks.
I believe E.C. Clark is quite likely Eliot Candee Clark (1883 - 1980) active/lived in New York, Virginia / Europe and known for landscape and harbor view painting. I found other works by him, including a painting of a fire scene done as this one was in 1899 (he would have been 16 or so!), but can't see the signature to compare. I do know that early in his youth, Clark traveled with his father and other prominent artists to paint in the summer art colonies at Annisquam, Gloucester, Chadd's Ford and Ogunquit, and it would not surprise me a bit if this was painting there.
(Clark was son of landscape painter Walter Clark and Jennifer Woodruff Clark, a student of psychic phenomena. Eliot Clark was a precocious artist who became a landscape painter in the late American Impressionist style. Moving to Albemarle, Virginia in 1932, he was one of the few Impressionist* artists of the Southern states. Likely this was a result of his association with James Whistler and his painting in 1900 at Gloucester, Massachusetts with John Twachtman, a family friend. Showing his obvious interest in Impressionism, he wrote a book about its exponents including Twachtman, Theodore Robinson, Childe Hassam, Julian Weir, and Robert Vonnoh."Clark was a teacher including at the National Arts Club* from 1943, the Art Students League*, and New York City College.)