Cleveland Museum of Art

Rock at Sea

Raymond Jonson

Date

1920–1922

Medium

oil on canvas

Culture

America

Department

American Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The radically stylized tendencies in Rock at Sea were motivated by Jonson’s earlier work as an avant-garde scenic and lighting designer for the esteemed Chicago Little Theatre. Inspired by the jagged coast of Ogunquit, Maine, the painting’s visionary rendering of nature embodies the artist’s long-standing interest in communicating mystical concepts. Later, Jonson would move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and co-found the Transcendental Painting Group, an association of artists dedicated to expressing the imaginative and spiritual realms through abstract art. Jonson admired this composition, recycling it years later for a mountainous New Mexico landscape painting.

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