The American visual artist Alice Neel travelled to New Jersey more or less every summer from 1934, initially renting a house on the seashore in Belmar and later purchasing her first small cottage in neighbouring Spring Lake. The concept of an artist on vacation seems a bit absurd in relation to one for whom painting was a way of life. Yet the liberated atmosphere, the chance for leisure and reverie that vacations permit, is often reflected in Neel's paintings from Spring Lake and Vermont, which capture the essence of these things, the spirit of place, yet also the contrast between suburbia and nature.