Charles Webster Hawthorne: A Luminist of the New England Coast Charles Webster Hawthorne, born in Lodi, Illinois, on January 8, 1872, represents a pivotal moment in American art—a bridge between the formal training of the late nineteenth century and the burgeoning spirit of artistic independence that would define the early twentieth. Though his formative 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, imbuing his work with a profound con…