The Tile Club: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting The Tile Club | Page 29

Figure 17. (left) Arthur Quartley (American,
b. France, 1839–1886), The Sea Serpent as Seen
by the Marine, 1882, charcoal and gouache on
paper, 11 3/4 x 18 1/4 in., Heckscher Museum
of Art, gift of the Baker/Pisano Collection,
2001.9.203
Figure 18. (below) Elihu Vedder (American,
1836–1923), Lair of the Sea Serpent, ca. 1899, oil
on canvas, 12 x 30 in., The Metropolitan Muse-
um of Art, gift of Mrs. Harold G. Henderson,
1976, 1976.106.1
man, and Knauth made the first trip to shore without
incident. Chase, Laffan, and Shinn made up the second
contingent, but before reaching land were confronted
with an enormous wave that set them reeling into the
sea. When they finally reached shore they were “bat-
tered, punched, buffeted, and banged to pieces.” 92 Next
came the unloading of the endless provisions and the
setting up of quarters, which reportedly took six hours.
The first night the artists were said to have suffered
from hallucinations, and the following morning, when
they could not find any inspirational material, they
relied on their purported nightmares to create fantas-
tic visions of sea serpents: “one to a dozen designs of
gigantic snakes, lashing the ocean with interminable
coils, wrapping ships in their folds, and threatening
the firmaments with their towering crests.” 93 Quart-
ley’s The Sea Serpent as Seen by the Marine provided the
reader with some indication of this fantastic creature
as it might have appeared in a Grimm fairy tale; while
Chase’s version, The Sea Serpent as Seen by ‘Briarius’ (lo-
cation unknown) is clearly derived from Elihu Vedder’s
painting The Lair of the Sea Serpent, 1864 (Museum of
Decorative Age or Decorative Craze? 23