Matthew McKenzie, Associate Professor of History, University of Connecticut

Southern New England’s coastline underwent a dramatic cultural make-over between 1840 and 1910. Viewed as a bucolic workspace before the Civil War, the coast was “reinvented” by painters after the war, and presented as pristine nature. By the early 20th century, painters sought to reconcile these two trends through romantic, idealized representations of one of the region’s most modern and dynamic industries—fishing.