A Luminist of the New England Coast Charles Webster Hawthorne, born in Lodi, Illinois, on January 8th, 1872, represents a pivotal moment in American art—a bridge between the waning traditions of academic painting and the burgeoning spirit of modernism. Though his early years unfolded amidst the rolling fields of the Midwest, it was the rugged, windswept coastline of Maine—to which his parents relocated shortly after his birth—that irrevocably shaped his artistic vision and became the enduring subject of his most celebrated works. This profound connection to the sea, nurtured through childhoo…