Lone Duxbury Beach House

Easel Set Up

Canal Street in Marshfield turns into Gurnet Road at the Duxbury town line and continues all the way to Duxbury Beach Reservation.   Between the entrance to DBR and the bath house (also housing Blakemon's Fish Shack) there is a lone house in the middle of the dunes.   A local person who lives nearby told me that the house is privately owned by a lawyer, who lives in Virginia, although the land is leased.  According to Duxbury Beach Book, there were more houses back in the early 1900's, but one by one over the years they have been claimed by ferocious ocean storms.

Lone Duxbury Beach House Stage One

The center of interest in this painting is the lone house along this stretch of Duxbury Beach.   The mid-December sun was low, and long blue shadows accented the orangy-gold beach grasses.   Cedars also made dark blue contrasts and random shapes and heights balancing the old beachhouse.   All of the trees branches and grasses leaned the same way - toward the west, their growth habit trained daily by the strong wind off the water.   Although there is no water visible in the painting, ocean waves were audible beyond the dunes to my left.  To my right were the waters and salt marshes of Duxbury Bay (along with significant tidal flooding in the road).

Lone Duxbury Beachhouse

For dry beach grasses, I generally use Naples Yellow and I either add a bit of blue for the further grasses (like in front of the beachhouse), or a bit of cadmium red, or burnt sienna and raw sienna for the immediate foreground grasses.  I used a flat brush for the angular beachhouse shape.   The area was not so deserted as it may seem in the painting, but that is what I like about it.

Here it is December, the daylight hours are short, it's cold, the lush green is gone and the scene offers a seasonal beauty.  I really love that about our area and I really like this painting.