A Holiday

A Holiday was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in the same year it was exhibited at the National Academy of Design's Ninetieth Annual Exhibition in 1915 — a remarkably swift path from studio to permanent collection. It entered through the Friends of American Art Collection, a Chicago-based patronage group that actively built the AIC's holdings of contemporary American art in the early 20th century. Potthast, a Cincinnati-born painter who trained in Munich and Antwerp before settling in New York, became one of the most celebrated American Impressionists of his era through beach scenes like this one, depicting middle-class leisure at New York area shores.