Carroll S. Tyson Jr., The Mouth of Somes Sound

Carroll S. Tyson, Jr., spent summers on Somes Sound, on the south-central coast of Mount Desert Island, Maine. The sound is depicted here in a quiet scene dominated by cool blues and greens punctuated by staccato touches of orange and red. The bright sky is filled with energetic moving clouds.

Tyson studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and exhibited his landscape paintings and pastels in 1927 at New York's prestigious Wildenstein Gallery as well as the Durand-Ruel Gallery, whose Paris headquarters organized solo showings for Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and Paule Gobillard. Cassatt encouraged Tyson and helped him gain access to important private collections, including that of her friend Louisine W. Havemeyer. Despite an impressive exhibition record during his lifetime, Tyson is best remembered for donating his extraordinary collection of paintings by Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Vincent van Gogh (including Sunflowers) to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.