Artist: John Sharman
Year: ca. 1918
Medium: Oil on canvas
This composition is an intricate network of trellis, railing, and awning. Upon this framework Sharman lavished broad strokes of brilliant color, applied with the sensitivity to light and shade that he acquired from the Impressionist practice of painting outdoors. This technique created a portrait of summer sun that casts deep shadows on the porch and transforms vines into a wave of white blossoms. Although not well known today, Sharman received many excellent reviews in his day, especially in his native Boston. A critic for the Boston Transcript described At the End of the Porch as “a beautiful, luminous and joyous picture of a place where one would like to be.”
