As we are mostly salt and water, the call of the sea summons a natural response: Go! On a 90-degree day, after viewing “The Lure of the Sea,” it’s all one can do not to chuck adult responsibilities and dive into the nearest wave. The group show on the Wentworth-Coolidge grounds at the edge of Portsmouth Harbor—maple shaded, lily speckled, pine and sea scented—is nearly refreshment enough, though.

Three hundred and sixty folks showed up for a Sunday evening opening. Dody Kolb, the Coolidge Center’s art director, curated the aquacentric show, pulling from 13 lives and portfolios. Those exhibiting include J. A. Adams, the Augustas (father George and son Chris), Sean Beavers, Frank Corso, Tom Glover, Grant Hacking, Simon Harling, Stan Moeller, Clifford Smith, Susan Pratt Smith, Alexandra de Steiguer and Don Stone. Well-orchestrated, and artistically very even, the show’s quality and continuity are excellent. Plein air oil painter Stan Moeller joked affectionately, “I call it Dodyland. She’s able to create another world for you there.”

Moeller has five pieces in the show. His work “A Walk at the Beach” is unmistakably Ogunquit. Anyone who’s traversed this stretch of sand knows the regret of eventually having to turn back. His work with light is exquisite, as if capturing the layers of its vertical strata. Jackets and windbreakers couple with the crisp short-waved sunshine of what feels like late March. Moeller foregrounds a blonde’s forelock, while shadows and wisps of blowing sand define the middle distance. Grays shroud and enshadow the tumbled granite boulders that shore up the side of the tidal creek. Above at a distance, the newly-revealed green lawn, patches of melting snow, a seaside inn; from bright to dim to bright. From another point of view, the “Sea’s Vertigo” places us atop a stony cliff, the thumps of waves hitting stone below, dancing energy and turquoise foam. One feels more animated than still, remembering the kinetics, filling in the blanks with updraft and cool mist.

Moeller enjoys the company he keeps in the show, speaking kindly of George Augusta, Frank Corso, and Don Stone, who mentored Moeller over a period of about seven years. “I love talking with Don, I can’t get enough of his information and ideas about painting,” he says. This community of painters who share the sea’s edges all have traveled in the same circles and have easy words and admiration for one another. Don Stone warms at the mention of 80-something George Augusta’s name: “George is a dear old friend, and we’ve been at it for quite a while.”
Wondering aloud to Stone how Augusta elicits the same sort of emotional tone and expressiveness with oils and pastels, Stone declares, as if it’s too simple to explain: “He’s a good painter… doesn’t matter what you use if you’re good!” Stone has that directness and candor I associate with coastal Mainers of a certain generation. A member of the National Academy of Design, he summers on Monhegan and winters in Exeter, where he has a studio. Although he denies having a Down East accent (“That’s Gloucesta’ y’hearin’”), he does admit to having spent a good deal of time in Maine: “Spoze I mighta picked some up… ben out here ’bout 30 summers, but, y’know, evryone from away has an accent.”

A major American Impress-ionist, Stone invests less in the subject he’s addressing than the quality of the light he’s painting. His paintings are luminous; layers of paint applied over and under one another backlight and highlight, underscore and tone each other. In the show’s only winter scene, “Toward White Head,” a lone trudger or skier pauses for a seaward glance as she traverses a snowy slope high on the shore. The snow’s lavenders, grays and blue shadows dissolve and suffuse into wave facets, crests and rolls. Water fluid and water frozen share collaborative colorations. Her back to us, we view the viewer. The punctuation of her red mittens in the landscape so full of sky blues, spruce greens and myriad whites is a loving touch.

The fitting counterpoint for “Toward White Head” (because of the temperature gradient) is George Augusta’s work. Augusta’s portraits include one of Rosalyn Carter for the White House, notes curator Kolb, though she loves his Impressionist “Beach Figures” for “its real people and skumbled skies. You can feel the heat of the sand.” Lavender and green layers of color under the creamy beige of sand infer seaweed and ground mussel shells. His pinks are beautiful and on duty: under tender skin hinting at a sunburn’s first heat; offering shade as an ineffectual umbrella; as a LaCoste oxford on a “lady who lunches.” His bodies are all real, beach-posed, with sags and curves, ill-fitting suits, sandy bottoms. He’s as observant as a birder.

Further asea, Clifford Smith’s “Evening Blue” reminds one of coming into Portsmouth Harbor at dusk in a slack tide, the smell of rockweed, the evening’s chill, a random gull and a bell buoy. Navy blues and smoky grays offer a multifaceted waterscape. The gloss of his finish and the angles of his brush strokes become animated by your shadow as you walk past the painting, mimicking the movement of water’s surface to the eye, a fitting image for a last backward glance before the return to urban life.

The Lure of the Sea
July 17-Aug. 14
The Coolidge Center for the Arts at Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion, 375 Little Harbor Road, Portsmouth, 603-436-6607
After you come out of the show, the experience continues on the grounds of the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion, which, like the gallery, are free and open to the public. Tour the mansion for a nominal fee. Gallery hours Wednesday-Saturday 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Sunday  1–5 p.m. For more information, visit www.nhparks.state.nh.us and follow the links.