American Art Collaborative

Theodore Robinson spent the early part of his career in France, where he took an interest in Impressionism. At the art colony at Giverny he became the closest acolyte of Claude Monet and absorbed the French master’s style of coarse brushwork and careful attention to color and light. Boats at a Landing was painted when Robinson was back in the United States and likely depicts a scene in Cos Cob, Connecticut, or on the New Jersey shore. With its emphasis on surface patterns, the painting suggests Robinson’s esteem for Japanese prints, which were widely admired at the time. American Impressionists followed the lead of Monet and James McNeill Whistler by collecting and studying them.