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Childe Hassam
Isles of Shoals (Girl and the Sea, Isles of Shoals), 1912
Fluid and vibrant, Hassam's Isles of Shoals explores the elemental boundaries of water, air, and earth. Painted by one of America's foremost impressionists at the turn of the 20th century, it positions a seated nude at the ocean's edge. In the sharply tilted setting, she is visually enveloped by the sea, laid down in countless horizontal strokes of azure, gray, and turquoise. The oil is among the numerous coastal views that Hassam completed during regular summer visits to the Isles of Shoals, a cluster of islands off the New Hampshire coast. There he found inspiration, rejuvenation, and the friendship of poet and island resident Celia Laighton Thaxter, whose lyrical gardening book his illustrated.
Like James McNeill Whistler and Charles Caryl Coleman before him, Hassam took an interest in designing his frames. This one, not original to the work, uses the letter H as a decorative motif. |