"The coast of Boston's North Shore, from Revere to Marblehead, was home to a remarkable school of American Marine Impressionists. The Lynn Beach Painters flourished as a group during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a period which saw not only the rise of European influences, but also great growth in American art in its own right."--BOOK JACKET. "As early as the 1850s, major international artists such as William Bradford and his teacher Albert Van Beest, had been drawn to the shoreline, marshes, and fish shacks of the Lynn, Swampscott and Nahant beaches. The ensuing decades saw the area emerge as both a major resort community and an industrial center with a high concentration of wealthy art patrons. At the same time, the widespread appreciation of art and art education was evident in the passage of the Mandatory Drawing Act of 1870. The Lynn Evening Drawing School, founded as a result, was a key factor in the development of the distinctive school of painting that thrived along the North Shore."--BOOK JACKET. "In the Lynn Beach Painters: Art Along the North Shore and its accompanying exhibition, art historian D. Roger Howlett and Lynn Historical Society curator Heather Johnson Reid for the first time recognize the group for both its cohesiveness and its significance and place it in the context of the period in American art, so strongly influenced by French Impressionism, plein-air painting and the modern Dutch school."--BOOK JACKET.