Ring around the Rosy

Three girls join hands and circle around for the childhood game of “ring around the rosy” in Edward Henry Potthast’s colorful beach scene. Their quickly moving bodies are mirrored in blurry reflections on the gleaming surface of the wave-smoothed sand and in shadows that appear blue in the glare of the sun. The white-capped water beyond the figures suggests a brisk wind that catches their hair and clothing; the girls’ quick circling is suggested by their blurred features and their unresolved poses, frozen in motion as if by the rapid blink of a camera’s lens. Potthast’s rapid application of paint in broad, rough strokes complements not only the whirling activity of the youthful figures but the breezy freedom of a sunny day at the beach.

In the latter part of his career Potthast specialized in such images of children and women at the beach. For these popular works, he often worked quickly on site, using small, portable wood panels. The beach, with its movement of people, water, and clouds and its intense sunlight, inspired Potthast’s full maturation as an impressionist painter as he applied bright color rapidly in obvious strokes to celebrate the fleeting nature of everyday life. Like the many American impressionist painters associated with themes of aristocratic leisure outdoors, Potthast painted in seaside resorts throughout New England. But in common with contemporary social realist painters, he also sought his subjects at beaches adjacent to his adopted city of New York, such as Coney Island, which attracted middle- and working-class pleasure-seekers. Ring around the Rosy hints at the diverse democratic culture of urban beaches in the dress worn by the figures. Two of the girls, who might be sisters with their identical cropped dark hair, wear simple clothing suggestive of a school uniform: plain, dark skirts over their bare legs and white “middy” blouses. In contrast, the third girl, almost hidden by one of her playmates, is dressed in a bright green, frilly dress with a matching hair bow and white hose.

Potthast painted at least one other work on the theme of “ring around the rosy,” a game that appealed to his impressionist sensibility for its challenge of fixing whirling movement. Such games also represented the concept of childhood as it had evolved during the late nineteenth century into a realm of joyful innocence distinct from adulthood. The game of ring around the rosy embodies this notion in the trusting clasping of hands to form a circle—a self-contained “society” of children. Accompanying and abetting new ideas of childhood at the time was the growth of leisure culture, the product not only of new wealth among the upper classes but of mandated shorter workdays and more holidays for workers. The beach itself became not only an important site for recreation for all classes but a popular setting for artists. In related works in the Terra Foundation collection, Winslow Homer’s Three Boys on the Shore (TF 1999.75) pictures a rural seaside idyll set in Gloucester, Massachusetts, while Small Yacht Racing (TF 1992.23) by Samuel S. Carr anticipates Potthast’s portrayal of the urban beach as a reserve for youthful recreation.

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