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We look across a profusion of vivid red, blush-pink, and white flowers lining a stony shoreline in this almost square landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted so some details are indistinct, especially the blossoms of the flowers, which are dabs of pink and red. The flowers have long, sage-green stems shaded with flicks of navy blue. The field of flowers covers the bottom third of the composition, and a vibrant green and blue bush peeks in from the right edge of the painting. Beyond the field of flowers is a powder-blue body of water with low, rocky formations, like giant, shallow boulders rolling across the surface of the water. The rocks are painted in shades of white tinged with pink, blue, and green with daubs of rust orange along their edges. An outcropping farther in the distance to our left is carpeted with patches of pea green and canary yellow. One rock formation in the middle of the composition almost spans the width of the painting. Beyond it is a small boat with white sails drifting on the water. In the deep distance is another long finger of oyster-white land stretching across the left half of the horizon, which comes two-thirds of the way up the composition. A lone bird flies through the milk-white sky that fills the top third of the scene. Some patches along the bottom edge of the painting are beige, where the canvas on which this is painted is visible. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “Childe Hassam 1891.”

Childe Hassam

Poppies, Isles of Shoals, 1891

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 70

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 50.2 x 61 cm (19 3/4 x 24 in.)

framed: 73.5 x 83.8 x 6.7 cm (28 15/16 x 33 x 2 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Margaret and Raymond Horowitz

Accession Number

1997.135.1

Artists / Makers

Childe Hassam (painter) American, 1859 - 1935

Image Use

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Overview

Childe Hassam was a regular visitor to the Isles of Shoals, nine small, rocky, treeless islands off the New Hampshire coast. His acquaintance with the islands was due to his poet friend Celia Thaxter, whose house on Appledore Island was a summer mecca for writers, painters, illustrators, musicians, and other artistic visitors. Between 1890 and 1894, the year of Thaxter's death, Hassam painted many fine works there, some depicting the interior of Thaxter's cottage, others (the majority), outdoor scenes set either in or nearby her much-admired flower garden. Poppies, Isles of Shoals presents a broad vista moving from a dense foreground of flowers to a background of rocks, water, and sky. This view, centered on an outcropping called Babb's Rock, was one of Hassam's favorites, for he painted it many times. Although ample signs of man's presence were readily apparent from Celia Thaxter's garden, Hassam usually excluded them from his paintings. Here, only a passing sailboat hints that we are not in some pristine, wild environment.

The composition is divided into three distinct and equal bands of space, in which different colors predominate: green and red for the flowers; blue, purple, and white for the rocks and water; and pale blue for the sky. Hassam's brushwork is equally varied, ranging from lush red and white strokes defining the flowers to long drags of pigment suggesting the multihued surfaces of the rocks. At the bottom he left areas of canvas bare, adding yet another color and texture. For anyone accustomed to academic landscape painting, seeing one of Hassam's Isles of Shoals paintings was, as one reviewer wrote, "like taking off a pair of black spectacles that one has been compelled to wear out of doors, and letting the full glory of nature's sunlight color pour in upon the retina." [1]

(Text by Franklin Kelly, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)

Notes

1. From a review of Hassam's exhibition at the Doll and Richards Gallery, Boston, c. 1891; undated clipping, probably from the Boston Transcript, Childe Hassam Papers, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; quoted in Ulrich W. Hiesinger, Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York, 1994), 86

Inscription

lower left: Childe Hassam 1891

Provenance

John Stringer Tilney, Orange, New Jersey, 1900-1925; his wife, Mrs. Mary Garner Tilney, 1925-1957; Marie Tilney Inge, Mobile, Alabama, 1957-1965; (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York), in 1965; Mrs. Ralph Ritter, until 1987; (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York), in 1987; Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz, New York;[1] gift (partial and promised) 1997 to NGA; gift completed 2006.

[1] Provenance from curator's acquisition proposal.

Associated Names

Horowitz, Raymond J., Mr. and Mrs.

Exhibition History

1977: Collectors, Phoenix Art Museum, 1977, no. 31, repro., as Poppies on Shoal Island.

1990: Childe Hassam: An Island Garden Revisited, Yale University Art Museum, New Haven; Denver Art Museum; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., 1990-1991, unnumbered, pl. 45, as Poppies (shown only in New Haven).

1994: American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915, Metropolitan Mus. of Art, New York; Amon Carter Mus., Fort Worth; Denver Art Mus.; Los Angeles Cnty. Mus. of Art, 1994-1995, no. 37, fig. 87 (shown only New York and Ft. Worth).

1999: American Impressionism and Realism: The Margaret and Raymond Horowitz Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999, no. 25, repro., as Poppies.

1999: Childe Hassam: An American Impressionist, Adelson Galleries, Inc., New York; Meredith Long & Co., Houston, 1999-2000, no. 37, repro.

2000: Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2003: The Golden Age of American Impressionism, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York, 2003-2004, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 1.

2004: Childe Hassam, American Impressionist, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 134.

2016: American Impressionist: Childe Hassam on the Isles of Shoals, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, 2016-2017, pl. 1.

Bibliography

1998: American Impressionism and Realism: The Margaret and Raymond Horowitz Collection. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998-1999: no. 25.