Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/63

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA In 1878, the family spent two years in England, laying foundations on those coastwise cliffs which led to the impressive canvases of rocks and surf of later days. There was a brief stay in Paris, too; but cheerful winters were spent in London, and the summers passed at various villages on the south and southwest coast of England, and Professor Theodore Richards says that during these years his father learnt much about rocks, and the complex wave motion caused by a broken shore.

In October, 1880, the family came back to the Germantown house; and the next year saw the building of the house on the cliffs at Conanicut Island in Rhode Island, which was called: "Gray Cliff." This was meant only for the summer, when it is possible to paint outdoors on that wild coast. But the needs of the incessant student of nature induced the exchange of the Germantown house for a large farm six miles from Coatesville, in the Chester Valley, Pennsylvania, where landscape could be overtaken in its more surly moods of 39