Object Details
- Artist
- Childe Hassam, born Dorchester, MA 1859-died East Hampton, NY 1935
- Gallery Label
- Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter's gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore's brief summer. This painting evokes the leisurely, seasonal rhythms of America's priveleged families in the last years before the Great War. A beautifully dressed woman shields her face from the sun; she looks down and away, as if absorbed in the song of a sandpiper, the island bird that inspired Celia Thaxter's most famous children's poem.
- Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
- Publication Label
- American Impressionism emerged in the late 1880s when a generation of American artists studied abroad to absorb the new palette and compositions that were modernizing painting in France. Landscapes and domestic scenes by these American Impressionists are as wonderfully fresh and sparkling as those by their more familiar French counterparts. These artists, attracted to the light and color of painting outdoors, celebrate a modern view of life as America entered the twentieth century.
- Childe Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers, and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter's gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore's brief summer.
- Smithsonian American Art Museum: Commemorative Guide. Nashville, TN: Beckon Books, 2015.
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
- 1913
- Object number
- 1929.6.62
- Restrictions & Rights
- CC0
- Type
- Painting
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 34 1/4 x 36 1/8 in. (87.0 x 91.6 cm.)
- See more items in
- Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture
- On View
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2nd Floor, East Wing
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Topic
- Dress\accessory\hat
- Figure female\full length
- Landscape\coast
- Landscape\Maine\Appledore Island
- Landscape\island\Appledore Island
- Record ID
- saam_1929.6.62
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk7dc912559-bc29-42d9-a67c-3d8486c41e7c
