Schwarz Gallery - Peter Caledon Cameron - Sunset over the Salt Meadows

Peter Caledon Cameron : Sunset over the Salt Meadows

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Artist:

Peter Caledon Cameron

Title:

Sunset over the Salt Meadows

Year:

1901–1918

Media:

Watercolor on paper 22 × 32 1/2 inches

Description:

Signed and inscribed at lower right: “Tuckerton Salt Meadows/N.J. USA/PCCameron [initials conjoined]”
Label (handwritten in ink on cardboard): “‘Sunset over the Salt-meadows.’/Original study direct from nature/painted by/P. C. Cameron. Philadelphia./Art Master’s Cert 1883./Brit Govt. S. K. London./Note. This picture is of historical interest as the little meadow-island in the middle, known/as Hickory Island, is the spot whereon now stands the tallest building in America,/world-famous as the Tuckerton Wireless Station radio–tower, 860 feet high./When this study was commenced in 1901, the artist lodged at Mott’s oyster-shanty/on Willet’s Thorofare and worked on a platform on the roof of a nearby hut used as a/marine-biological laboratory by the late state-biologist, Prof Julius Nelson of Rutgers Coll./Every year since—say 17 years—the artist took this study with him to the New Jersey/Coast and watched for similar sunset effects in order to make this as perfect as possible./Please do not allow anyone to copy or to photograph this original work of art.”

By his own testimony, Cameron commenced Sunset over the Salt Meadows in 1901 and kept taking the watercolor back to the site for the next seventeen years, watching “for similar sunset effects in order to make this as perfect as possible.” The Tuckerton Wireless Station was built by a German concern between 1912 and 1914, giving rise to the rumor that it was used for espionage. A history of the area states that “The site faced an uninterrupted sweep of the Atlantic and there was no electrical disturbance near it . . . Taken over by the federal government in World War I, this was later acquired by the Radio Corporation of America, which installed new equipment involving the erection of fourteen Marconi tubular masts each 305 feet high, to transmit messages to European cities as well as to communicate with ships at sea. The main mast is 778 feet high and weighs 250 tons.”¹

The Professor Julius Nelson mentioned in Cameron’s inscription was a prominent biologist and authority on the oyster. He became biologist of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station in 1888, after the New Jersey legislature enacted a law providing funds for the study of oyster culture. That same year Nelson became a professor of biology at Rutgers College (now Rutgers University) and remained there until his death. He was appointed the State Biologist of New Jersey by a special act of the state legislature in 1901. Cameron may well have known Nelson personally and been interested in his biological research.

Notes

1. Harold F. Wilson, The Jersey Shore: A Social and Economic History of the Counties of Atlantic, Cape May, Monmouth, and Ocean (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1953), vol. 2, pp. 816–17.

copyright © 2010 Schwarz Gallery

Price:

This item is no longer available for sale

Inventory:

RS 2959

Category:

•a:American•a:English•a:Luminist•landscape•marsh•New Jersey•nineteenth century•paper•sunset•watercolor•

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