Childe Hassam 1859-1935

Childe Hassam first visited Appledore, one of the remote, rocky islands that make up the Isles of Shoals off the New England coast, as early as 1884 and returned there frequently for what he called “working vacations” until 1916.  The artist’s friend Celia Thaxter, a well-known poet and gardener, had a home on Appledore and her gracious hospitality invariably attracted a large group of artists, writers and musicians to her informal summer colony.  Taking his inspiration from nature and focusing on the play of light and color, Hassam produced some of the most beautiful American Impressionist paintings of the late 19th-century.  The Isles of Shoals pictures of 1890-1894 are among the artist's most successful and popular works.

In 1890, Hassam depicted Evelyn Benedict seated among the exuberant flowers of Thaxter’s seaside garden. Visitors to Appledore were captivated by the famous garden, which grew on the challenging rocky terrain just outside Thaxter’s cottage.  Her contemporary Maude Appleton McDowell wrote: “Her garden, too, was unlike any other garden, although more beautiful, perhaps, than the more conventional gardens I have seen lately; for it was planted all helter-skelter, just bursts of color here and there, - and what color!  I have been told that the sea-air makes the color of flowers more vivid than they appear in inland gardens.  Certainly, it was so in this garden.”  In her own book about the garden, Thaxter described it as “steeped in sunshine, a sea of exquisite color swaying in the light air.  Poppies blowing scarlet in the wind, or delicately flushing in softest rose or clearest red, or shining white where the Bride stands tall and fair, like a queen among them all” (An Island Garden, Boston, Massachusetts, 1894, p. 102).

Apparently Miss Benedict was a regular visitor to Appledore.  In a letter dated August 28, 1892, Thaxter wrote to her, “I have done nothing but lament your departure ever since you went.  Never was there such an exquisite summer, never such good times of Shoals kinds and sorts.  Mr. William Winch is here, and he sings and sings, oh, how he sings! and he says every now and then, ‘This is what Miss Benedict likes,’ before he begins some especially divine song, and then we all regret you are not here to listen.

“Mr. Mason asks me to tell you that he has had some work for which he would have given much to have your assistance, so that he has missed you not only for reasons sentimental, but for reasons practical.  We have just got through with the most immense storm I ever saw in the summer, and the surf has been beyond all human description.  People got up and came down in the middle of the night, thinking the island would be cast away!  They are out in the wet all the time.  Appleton Brown brings in a new picture every five minutes of the boiling breakers!!  I am expecting Mr. Whittier presently, dear old man.  He said, ‘I want to go once more to the Shoals.’” (Annie Fields and Rose Lamb, eds., Letters of Celia Thaxter, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1895).