MANCHESTER, NH.- Manchester, New Hampshire – The Currier Museum of Art is offering visitors the rare opportunity to see Vincent van Gogh’s first outdoor painting, Beach at Scheveningen in Calm Weather (1882). The work shows diminutive figures walking along the shore against three anchored boats, and provides among the first glimpses into the techniques of a visionary artist whose expressive and emotive use of vibrant colors and dynamic application of paint would transform the art world forever. Set in Scheveningen, a seaside town near The Hague in the Netherlands, the artwork was painted eleven days prior to Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather, which is held at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

This extraordinary painting is on temporary loan to the Currier alongside two paintings by Andrew Wyeth, whose first museum exhibition took place at the Currier in 1939, when the artist was just 21 years old. The oldest of the paintings is The Wake (1964), a haunting image of an unmanned boat careening unpredictably. The other, Day Dream (1980) – previously owned by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation – features a recumbent nude charged with psychological tension and a sense of illicit intimacy. The model for this sensual tempera is Helga Testorf, a neighbor of Wyeth's in Chadds Ford, PA, who posed for him in secret for many years.

A New Exhibition: Stories of the Sea>

The Wake and Beach at Scheveningen are centerpieces of a new show currently on view at the museum titled Stories of the Sea, which brings together a wide array of artworks and objects from the Currier’s permanent collection in order to explore various maritime themes. The selection spans the 16th century to the present day, and includes dramatic seascapes painted in the Romantic tradition; images of steamers and transoceanic travels, referencing migration and tourism; representations of harbors and shipyards; and poetic tributes to the hardships endured by men working at sea.

Stories of the Sea also looks at the ways in which women have been conventionally depicted by the Western art canon in relation to the sea. Although at times seductive and mysterious, as in the case of mermaids and mythological sea monsters, women are more often presented as melancholic and pensive, waiting in anguish ashore for the return of their men. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Cross by the Sea, Canada (1932), one of the most beloved paintings in the Currier’s collection, stands out in this section.

The display also features another loan, the remarkable 17th-century Celestial Chart and Terrestrial Map by Hendrick Doncker dedicated to William of Orange (William III of England), which is juxtaposed to Gravesend (2019) by contemporary British artist Hew Locke, an installation that directly connects the maritime genre to international trading, colonialism, diasporic fluxes, and the “encounter” with Indigenous communities.

Museum curators and educators will be leading a variety of conversations about the works on display, both those on loan and from the collection. Details of these educational tours are being shared via the Currier’s website and social media platforms.