Childe Hassam (1859–1935)

CHILDE HASSAM (1859–1935)
White Island Lighthouse, Isles of Shoals, 1890
Watercolor on paper, 14 x 20 in.
Signed, dated, and inscribed (at lower right): 'Childe Hassam Shoals / 1890

EX COLL.: the artist, 1890; private collection, Massachusetts, until 2005; to [David Hall Fine Art, Dover, Massachusetts, 2005]; to private collection, until 2024

Hassam’s first documented visit to the Isles of Shoals was in August 1886, when he painted seven watercolors featuring the White Island Lighthouse and the neighboring lighthouse-keeper’s cottage seen from various viewpoints. The site was no doubt brought to his attention through his friendship with Thaxter, as her father, Thomas B. Laighton served as the keeper of the lighthouse from 1839 to 1849. (This suite of watercolors includes Lighthouse [1886; The Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts], which features a close-up view of the structure. Hassam continued to make intermittent visits to the area until about 1916, painting views of Thaxter’s flower gardens and the adjacent rock-bound coastline. Indeed, an “aesthetic tourist” who took great delight in Appledore’s pictorial offerings, Hassam’s oils, watercolors, and pastels of the island and its environs constitute some of the finest and most lyrical work of his career.

Executed from the cusp of an outcropping of rocks, Hassam’s scene affords us a panoramic glimpse of White Island and the 58-foot lighthouse that still stands today. Noted for its conical white tower topped by a black lantern, the White Island Lighthouse is New Hampshire’s only offshore lighthouse. Erected in 1865, it replaced an earlier structure from 1821 that was constructed in stone and encased in wooden shingles. By the time Hassam first depicted it in 1886, the lighthouse had become a popular landmark for tourists.