拍品專文
Armin Hansen's Northern California marine paintings, such as the present work, Drifting Fog, are among his most celebrated images. In 1912, Hansen returned from studies in Stuttgart, Germany to settle in San Francisco, immediately established a studio and began a brief period of teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. A year after exhibiting and winning a silver medal for his paintings The Belated Boat and At the Breakfast Table at the 1915 Pan Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, Hansen moved permanently from San Francisco to the Monterey Peninsula. In Monterey, Hansen continued his visual exploration of the ocean and the various industries associated with it, particularly the area's active sardine industry, while still expanding on themes he had encountered in Europe working as a sailor in the North Sea and sketching harbor life in the coastal towns of Belgium. "His coastal landscapes and marine paintings depicting Monterey's fishing industry rendered in bravura brush-strokes brought Hansen national recognition and made him one of Monterey's leading artists." (H.L. Jones, Impressions of California: Early Currents in Art 1850-1930, Irvine, California, 1996, p. 69) Drifting Fog, composed in a saturated palette, vigorous brushstrokes and with a sense of realism and accuracy gained from first-hand experience, demonstrates the artist's inspired sense of color and composition and his profound and lifelong love working on the Pacific Ocean.