Coming Squall (Nahant Beach with a Summer Shower)

As the first American artist to identify himself as a landscape painter, Thomas Doughty was instrumental in pushing the genre beyond mere topographical description to explore the larger idea of nature itself. Produced at the height of his career, this view of the sea at Nahant, Massachusetts, recalls 17th-century Dutch landscapes in the way that it captures changing atmospheric conditions and their effect on the surroundings without any hint of a narrative.

Such paintings made Doughty one of the most popular landscapists in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s. In elevating nature as a worthy subject in its own right, Doughty, like fellow artist Thomas Cole, was particularly influential for the generation of landscape painters who came after him, namely the Hudson River School.

As Oil on canvas mounted on cradled panel (52.1 × 71.4 cm (20 1/2 × 28 1/8 in.)), the work shows the tool marks and layering choices typical of Thomas Doughty American's output in this period — decisions about ground, underpainting, and glaze that a photograph can only partly convey.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Weather and light are the real subject — the artist is tracking a specific, fleeting atmospheric moment rather than an idealized, generic view.

Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how Thomas Doughty American's output from this period is understood.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”