CHILDE HASSAM | White Island Light, Isles of Shoals

Cedric Laighton, Appledore Island, Isles of Shoals, Maine
Margaret Laighton (his daughter, by descent)
Elliot Forbes (her son, by descent)
By descent to the present owner

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Executed in 1886, the present watercolor is one of the earliest dated works that Childe Hassam produced on the Isles of Shoals, a group of islands ten miles off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. White Island Light, Isles of Shoals is part of a small series of works that depict the lighthouse on White Island, the best-known structure at the Shoals. Hassam’s watercolors and oils from the period are characterized by the artist’s balanced synthesis between light and color, and are among the most revered in his prolific oeuvre. Of this series, the scholar David Park Curry writes: “Fresh and invigorating, the Isles of Shoals pictures stand out vividly against Hassam’s huge body of work as a whole. Memories of long-gone summers reach across the years, for his best pieces are still charged with the artist’s sense of adventure as he took chances with composition, let go with color” (Childe Hassam: An Island Garden Revisited, New York, 1990, p. 14).

Hassam’s attraction to the Isles of Shoals stems from his close friendship with the poet and journalist Celia Laighton Thaxter, whose family operated a hotel on Appledore, the largest island at the Shoals. At her home, Thaxter established an informal salon and cultivated a celebrated garden in its yard. Remembering his summers spent at the Shoals, Hassam remarked: “Celia Thaxter made the islands known to a great many—in those far-off days I painted there…many pleasant summers” (Letter from Childe Hassam to Mrs. McClellan, 1929 as quoted in Ibid., p. 13). Born in 1835, Thaxter moved to the Shoals at the age of four, when her father, Thomas Laighton, took a job as the lighthouse keeper at White Island Light. As a young girl, Celia helped her father light the lamp and polished the reflectors of the lantern glass. The lighthouse served as frequent inspiration for her poetry and features notably in her poem “The Wreck of the Pocahontas” of 1868.

Fittingly, White Island Light, Isles of Shoals initially belonged to Celia Thaxter’s brother, Cedric Laighton, and has since descended within the family.

This work will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.