Aaron Anderson
Specialist, Head of Sale
Lot 31
Childe Hassam(1859-1935)Appledore Island, Isle of Shoals, Maine 14 x 19 7/8in (35.6 x 50.5cm)
19 November 2019, 16:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$27,575 inc. premium
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Childe Hassam (1859-1935)
Appledore Island, Isle of Shoals, Maine
signed and dated 'Childe Hassam 1906' (lower left)
watercolor on paper
14 x 19 7/8in (35.6 x 50.5cm)
Executed in 1906.
signed and dated 'Childe Hassam 1906' (lower left)
watercolor on paper
14 x 19 7/8in (35.6 x 50.5cm)
Executed in 1906.
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, San Francisco, California, by 1958.
Private collection, Ireland, by descent from the above, 1963.
By descent to the present owners.
Exhibited
(possibly) San Francisco, California, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, February 1958.
This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.
We wish to thank the catalogue raisonné committee for their assistance cataloguing this lot.
The Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine, including the island of Appledore, were for thirty-five years a source of inspiration and refuge for the American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam. Hassam returned to the islands on a regular basis to paint the natural garden of Celia Thaxter and the craggy rock outcroppings that punctuated the islands' shores. Appledore Island, Isle of Shoals, Maine, executed in 1906, is from a prime period of Hassam's work on the islands. The present work depicts the brilliant midday light, clear sky, and calm waters of Maine, which the artist captured in energetic, fluent brushwork, maximizing the fluidity of the watercolor medium.
Hassam was initially invited to the islands by Celia Thaxter, a poet, essayist and gardener who was the doyenne of Appledore. She conducted a summer salon for artists and writers, Hassam was one among the major figures who frequented the location. On the island of Appledore, Hassam found a natural haven and muse where he could create his paeans to the natural beauty of the surroundings. Hassam was particularly drawn to the rugged coastal rock formations seen in the present work. Another Appledore watercolor, of the same size and a similar coastline subject, is The Gorge, Appledore, 1912, in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York. For Hassam, the isolation, primitive natural surroundings, colorful rock formations, and reflected light off the ocean inspired some of his most innovative seascapes.