Harry Russell Ballinger

Gull Cove, Maine
c. 1940
Oil on Canvas
30 x 40

Harry Russell Ballinger (1892-1993)

Trained at the University of California, the Art Students League in New York and the Academie Colarossi in Paris, Harry Russell Ballinger gained national acclaim for his ability to paint the ocean and its undulations. A master at rendering the ebb and flow of the tides, the crash of waves and the atmosphere of ocean breezes, Ballinger was a mainstay of the Rockport, Massachusetts art colony for much of the twentieth century. He wrote three books about painting the ocean and its environs and was both illustrator and author of dozens of articles on the subject for national magazines. Ballinger was a member of the Allied Artists Association, Audubon Artists, American Watercolor Society; New Haven Paint and Clay, Kent Art Association. His work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design; the Hartford Atheneum, Connecticut Watercolor Society, Rockport Art Association, North Shore Art Association, Allied Artists Association. Examples of his work survive today in museums including New Britain Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum of Art, the Springfield Art Museum, the Mattatuck Museum and in many other public and private collections.