Framed: 22 1/2 x 26 3/4 inches
artist
Born in Kauai, Hawaii in 1916, Tam grew up surrounded by the dramatic geology and cultural rhythms of the Pacific. This early environment shaped his deep connection to nature. He studied fine arts at the University of Hawaii in the late 1930s, briefly at the California School of Fine Art, then in New York City where he engaged with the burgeoning ideas of American modernism. By the late 1940s, travels through France and Italy exposed him to European abstraction, which further expanded his visual approach.
In the 1950s, he began spending summers on Monhegan Island, returning regularly through the 1970s. The island’s isolation and rugged terrain offered him a new kind of inspiration.
In 1980 Tam returned to Kauai where he continued to deepen his exploration of natural forces, light, weather, silence, until his death in 1991. His work was widely exhibited in his lifetime, including for a time with the Downtown Gallery in New York. He received numerous honors, was a National Academician, and earned a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1948.
Description
In White Sea, Monhegan, Tam captures the island’s windswept stillness with a delicate balance between observation and abstraction. The composition, dominated by pale tones of sea and sky, is punctuated by soft strokes of ochre, plum, and blue, suggesting rocks emerging through surf along Monhegan’s jagged coastline. Tam’s first visit to the island in the early 1950s marked a turning point in his career, offering a stark northern contrast to the tropical color and volcanic forms of his native Hawaii. Like many artists before him, he was drawn to Monhegan’s raw, elemental landscape, where the rocky coastline, shifting Atlantic light, and sense of isolation created a setting that encouraged introspection and experimentation. For generations the island had attracted painters seeking clarity and renewal, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, and Edward Hopper among them, and Tam, too, found in its wild terrain a place to distill form and light in new ways. Of monhegan he wrote:
“One place was especially fascinating to me – Monhegan Island. Here I built a studio home…The spruce forests, headland and tides of the island have been major subject matter in my work for more than twenty years. The confluence of Atlantic wind and ocean currents and the weathering of rocky promontories provide the basic theme, but unlike the rich warm red and burnt sienna basalt of Hawaii, here it is cold grey gneiss and granite. The sky can be opaque with fog for weeks on end, and your palette runs to Payne’s grey and lots of white for fog, sea, and spindrift.”
Excerpt from an Autobiographical Essay by Reuban Tam, 1975 – Smithsonian Archives
provenance
Barridoff Auction, Portland ME August 2025