Beacon for art on Cape

“Tides’’ curator Alexander Noelle has organized an exhibit rich with context. Some of the greatest painting talent of the 20th century funneled into the little seaside town every summer. The impressive list - Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb - is supplemented by shorter stays from artists such as Willem de Kooning, Charles Demuth, and Edward Hopper, all of whom have works here. The Provincetown art scene became a microcosm of the fractious, fertile path of American art history in the 20th century, and “Tides’’ maps that path better than any exhibit I have yet seen.

“Tides’’ begins with the arrival in Provincetown in 1899 of Charles W. Hawthorne, a painter who had studied with American Impressionist William Merritt Chase, and had examined the work of Dutch Old Masters. His paintings and his pedagogy combined elements of both. He made somber, delicate portraits in dark tones of the locals. “The Fisher Boy’’ (1908) and “The Fishwife’’ (1925) capture the earnest features of people at work, pale against brooding backgrounds. As you might imagine, Hawthorne developed a notable talent for painting fish.

But he also savored brilliant tones, broad gestures, and contrasts of color. Hawthorne taught gaggles of painters, mostly women, out on the beach and on the pier. He urged them to work quickly, painting what he called “mudheads,’’ bright figures with shadowed faces. One of his own mudheads, “Girl With Parasol’’ (circa 1920) is a fleet, breezy composition of forms shaped entirely by their sunny hues.