Letter from William A. Coffin to Henry Clay Frick, 19 October 1898

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Beginning of Page 2 sign of a break up. I like to paint the rain but I don't do it unless I feel like it. I did a good many evening and morning effects this past summer but only started one "rain". I did but one last year — your picture. The subject is taken from a point near the house at "Pine Spring Farm" in Somerset County where my mother now lives and where I have a little summer studio. The ploughed fields and first riding ground in the middle distance belong to the farm. The village of Jennerstown is on the crown of the hill. The road going up on the left of the picture is the pike which runs north and south from Somerset to Johnstown. You are looking directly to the south in the picture. I feel sure you will like this work the better you become acquainted with it. I consider it one of the best effects I have painted End of Page 2 Beginning of Page 3 and I like the color scheme for its unity and delicacy. The small picture you have; the title being, I believe, "Evening—Marion, Massachusetts," was painted at Marion on Buzzard's Bay. This from a point up the river on arm of the sea where the summer cottages are. This taken from a piazza which fronts the water, occupied at that time by Mrs. Van Rensselaer. Mr. Gilder lived next door and used to come to look at the study when I was working and I afterward painted at his place —doing a starlight night effect, a dark canvas, of course, artificially lighted in the foreground—and he liked the picture so much that he bought it. In the "Evening" you are looking to the East and the sky as I remember it was rosy with the sunset reflection. I think I painted it in 1891. I don't know whether the Pittsburgh Committee will like my large picture "At Break of Day" well enough End of Page 3

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