Congratulations on receiving an Art History Honorable Mention/ Spring 2026 and best wishes ongoing to: Nora Ann Kosch, a senior at Drew University studying Art History minoring in History and Medieval Studies.
“In this tumultuous time in our world, where the Arts and Historical education are being threatened with underfunding or complete erasure, I hope to become a defender within these fields. As I gain more experience as a future educator, I aim to become an inspirational educator and advocate for further education in vulnerable and minority communities. In achieving this goal, I want to foster and create welcoming spaces for anyone to continue learning the Arts and History. Once I complete my bachelor’s degree, I plan to continue to my master’s in Art History and teach for diverse audiences at museums or in higher education. I would love to participate in these fields and continue on this tradition of learning the value of Art History and History, including the other fields of the humanities.”
Honorable Mention ESSAY: Compare and contrast the 2 paintings below:
Nora’s Essay:
In “The Inlet, The Cove” by Eileen Monaghan Whitaker from 1941, the viewer can instantly identify the distinct, lively strokes attributed to Monaghan Whitaker. The bright colors create the image of a cool, easy morning on the shore through her use of creams, blues, and brown accents. Like many of her works from her time in New York and New England, Monaghan Whitaker often uses an abundance of cool or pale colors that sink into the background to create larger shapes in the image. We can see this in the shape and coloring of the trees on the other side of the shore, as well as the grey rocks on the sand. However, these particular rocks are accented with the use of warmer colors like red or dark brown by their shadowing and large rocks inside the middleground. This and other uses of warmer colors are characteristic of this locale in Monaghan Whitaker’s pieces, where the input of red creates a sharp contrast against the cool tones within the surrounding landscape. This technique is also seen in Frederic Whitaker’s piece, “Day is Done, Norwalk River”, from 1971.
Her strokes on the paper are detailed enough to give a clear impression of each indentation in the sand, the rocks, and even the bush surrounding the lone tree. She uses this method effectively, letting our minds fill in the details like a hazy dream. This image of the inlet creates a nostalgic picture on the shore, like a memory from one’s youth. The details of the boats are hazy in the distance, the person on the nearest boat waves to the viewer, but is unidentifiable. Rocks litter the shoreline and are indistinguishable from one another, yet the blotches of colors on the sand seem to have a feel to them as if the viewer were to walk along the shore. The sand in this image is given a great amount of detail even if they may not be sharp grays or blacks as seen in a watercolor attributed to Frederic Whitaker. Monaghan Whitaker brings together the use of browns, blues, and greens in a whimsical creation of sand. Perhaps, back then, she was capturing the shift of dirt to sand once a person walked away from the forest towards the water.
Frederic Whitaker is characteristically free with his strokes of watercolor, unlike Eileen Monaghan Whitaker, who tends to use comparatively wider strokes, to create greater detail within this image on the Norwalk River. Whitaker utilizes these thinner strokes against large splashes of color to add detail to objects like clouds and hills on the other side of the shore. This attention to detail extends to his addition of tiny ripples in the water. Whitaker captures the river just after sunset, perhaps in between twilight, and uses this shift from day to night to his advantage. The colors seen in the sky are also in the shift from cool to warm, from bright blue to dusty pink. Though Frederic Whitaker utilizes brighter colors on the boats docked by the shoreline, the shift is gradual and blends well with the blues, purples, and pink seen in the landscape. The colors on the boats derive from those seen within sky and water, the only exception that truly stands out in the image is the use of red, which appears to be minimal compared to Monaghan’s mass of burnt sienna and umber. These colors are toned down, yet full of life like many of Whitaker’s other landscapes.
What theme appears to be similar within these two images, is the shift from one concept to another, cool to warm, land to water. Which may either be gradual, like “Day is Done” by Frederic Whitaker, or sharp in contrast, like “The Inlet” by Eileen Monaghan Whitaker, but still display a shift in tones and even times of day. As mentioned earlier, Whitaker captures the end of a day either at shore, or working on this piece, and the boats coming into shore as the sun goes below the horizon. While Monaghan Whitaker, starts a new day with her image, the sun is not at its peak, but the day has started for many of the people manning the boats. Contrary to “The Inlet”, “Day is Done” feels as though the viewer is looking at the river with older eyes. The detail is sharper, as if the point of view took a moment after a tiring day to reflect, like a moment of calm seen in both images.
Leave a Reply