Despite the title, Boy with a Cod is not one of Hansen’s typical genre scenes of fishermen in which large figures dominated. The boy is small in scale and the cod not easily discernible. The painting is a seascape in which the figure of a boy merely serves to direct the viewer’s gaze beyond the boats into the wide expanse of ocean and sky. Hansen was best known for his dramatic, stormy marines, but, as Boy with a Cod demonstrates, he was equally skilled in capturing the more delicate and serene aspects of nature. The soft, grayish tones of blue and green are characteristic of the palette he established early on, and such color symphonies enabled the artist to capture the atmospheric conditions and mood of the coast on a cold afternoon. His practice of posing the figure in the open air no doubt encouraged the direct, fresh brushwork.

After the centennial of 1876 the foremost place for American artists to show was no longer New York but Paris. By the late nineteenth century the Paris Salon was the most important exhibition space in the Western world. Artists from many nations would submit their best works to its annual exhibition. The honor of being accepted presaged an artist’s future success. Thousands of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper were presented at each Salon; the exhibition halls were so crowded that paintings were hung to the ceiling with sculptures scattered about. To be hung “on the line” (at eye level) meant a work of art ranked among the best in the show. Since a painting might be skied (hung near the ceiling), many artists painted on a large scale to ensure that their work could be seen no matter where it was placed.
Contrary to earlier periods, American painting in the late 1800s was no longer dominated by a single aesthetic. Munich-school paintings—narrative scenes, often based on literature or history and painted in a dark palette—as well as small figure paintings in the realist tradition were popular in both France and the United States. Large portraits represent the academic style that dominated official taste during this era. Bright, sun-drenched scenes by a more progressive group of artists, the impressionists are diametrically opposite in color, mood, and concept to muted tonalist and symbolist works. Whereas the impressionists celebrated contemporary life with all its transformations, the tonalists and symbolists created hazily illuminated, dreamlike imagery.
Sculptures range from academic examples of idealized mythological imagery to expressions of the newer interest in the emotive potential of the human form. Equestrian bronzes by Frederic Remington demonstrate that at the turn of the century there was a continuing enthusiasm for heroic depictions of the West despite the increased internationalism of American taste.

Dubbed the “Winslow Homer of the West Coast” for his powerful seascapes, Armin Hansen sometimes responded to the Monterey coastline in more delicate terms. Turn-of-the-century landscape and seascape paintings of northern California were dominated by a tonalist aesthetic, no doubt encouraged by the misty, luminous atmosphere that often pervades the region. Hansen moved to Monterey in the early 1910s after working on a trawler in the North Sea and painting in a colony of artists on the coast of Belgium. Consequently he was intimately versed in the moods of the sea. He devoted many of his paintings and prints to the fishing industry, often illustrating man’s battle with the forces of the ocean. Boy with a Cod, on the other hand, depicts a young man on a solitary walk along the shore. The cold dampness of the sea and wetness of the air are hinted at by the direct brushwork and soft, cool palette. In this painting Hansen sensitively combined tonalism and impressionism to convey almost firsthand the boy’s experience of nature. The painting was bought from an exhibition of works by San Francisco artists held at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art in 1919. Its elaborately carved Arts and Crafts frame is original to the painting.