Probably no painting currently on display in the Hunter Museum generates more visitor comment and, for that matter, more indignation than Philip Evergood's seamy Love on the Beach. Rather contrary to the title, the concept of "love" is presented only in its basest sense and the picture overall is far from "lovely." The design is cluttered, forms exaggerated nearly to the grotesque, perspective distorted, and the rendering technique unrefined. These apparent faults however were part of the artist's calculated effort to produce a scene so agitating that the viewer cannot just look casually, but must react, and in so doing be compelled to consider certain underlying issues. Kendall Taylor has noted: "Neutrality is as impossible for the observer of Philip Evergood's art as it was for its creator."

Subjectively then, Love on the Beach is a cynical study of shallow human relationships, wanton pleasures, and tawdry existence. Intimations of sexual indulgence are numerous. The three couples cavort or embrace licentiously. The spread-leg positioning by several of the figures is additionally suggestive, while the grappling crabs in the mid-foreground are a not-too-subtle allusion to the contracted parasites associated with promiscuity and uncleanliness. Dominant lines and shapes of the composition -- including the strangely angular seashore -- draw the eye to the center, where the principal characters are superimposed at the hips (hence the erogenous parts) in a visually tight, gnarled knot. Even the litter-strewn sand reinforces the general feeling of shabbiness.

Evergood was born Philip Howard Blashki in New York City in 1901. His father, a Polish immigrant by way of Australia, changed the family name to Evergood, which was an Anglicization of Immergut, his mother's -- i.e., Philip's grandmother's -- maiden name. He was raised and educated in England, attending Eton, Cambridge University, and London's Slade School of Art. At age twenty-two he returned to the United States and promptly enrolled at the Art Students League, where he studied two years, principally with William von Schlegell and George Luks. Subsequently, he also attended Stanley William Hayter's well-known graphic arts school in New York, Atelier 17. In the late twenties he went again to Europe to study at the Académie Julian in Paris.

On his second homecoming Evergood found an America reeling from the Great Depression. He was aghast at the poverty and the physical or emotional distress he witnessed, and his painting style changed accordingly. Though tempered by fantasy, wry humor, and an obscure personal symbolism, social criticism characterizes what today is regarded as his most significant work. Typical themes include political oppression, racial discrimination, coarse life among the urban poor, and, as in the case of Love on the Beach, the mundane amusements of people uninspired or oblivious to nobler pursuits. Interestingly, Reginald Marsh, a "social realist" and a contemporary with whom Evergood is often compared, painted similar studies of the teeming masses at the beach.

Tragically, Evergood died in a fire at his Connecticut home in 1973. One of his biographers, John I. H. Baur, fittingly summarized his personality and career:

He had to weep or laugh in life with the same intensity that he wept or laughed on canvas. And he had to translate the emotions of life into the very different language of art with the utmost immediacy of feeling. Despite the fact that he painted many hasty and even some downright bad canvases, he never painted a dull or conventional one.