CHILDE HASSAM: American Impressionist and the Isles of Shoals at Peabody Essex Museum: Review by Polly Guerin

Childe Hassam painting on Celia Thaxter's porch

Can an artist find inspiration on a treeless island, called Appledore? Childe Hassam, the celebrated American impressionist painter found his oeuvre in the celebrated Maine island for nearly thirty years. Bracing each day through gusty salt Atlantic breezes, the relentless sun blazing over his shoulder he painted en plein air seascape vistas, and spent summer nights at poet and author, Celia Thaxter's salon. Today one can vicariously visit the island through Hassam's prolific Appeldore paintings at PEM.
    THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM,  (PEM) in Salem, Massachusettes presents AMERICAN IMPRESSIONIST; CHILDE HASSAM AND THE ISLE OF SHOALS, through November 6, 2016, and pays homage to Hassam with the first exhibition in more than 25  years to focus on Hassam's paintings of the celebrated island. More than 40 of  Hassam's greatest oil paintings and water colors record the coves, inlets, ledges and expansive seascapes that inspired his thirty year engagement with this alluring island. Six miles off the coast of southern New Hampshire and Maine, Appledore is the largest island in the storied archipelago in the Atlantic known as the Isle of Shoals.  (Image: Attributed to Karl Thaxter (1852-1912). Childe Hassam painting on the porch of Celia Thaxter's cottage, c. 1886. Portsmouth Athenaeum, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Isles of Shoals, Photograph Collection.)
A ROCKING CHAIR VISTA. Visualize the seascape mood. Just pull up one of the white rocking chairs provided for visitors and reflect upon the magnificent and multi fascinating paintings of the gorges and rocks at Appledore. "His paintings of a wave dashing the spray among the rocks was magnificent and matchless for its technique and coloring," wrote Oscar Leighton, 90 Years on the Isles of Shoals. 1929. Then, there is a large photo image on one wall where an empty rocking chair on a cottage veranda invites you to vicariously sit and listen to the audio of the relentless ocean crashing against the rocks. At the post card table, visitors are invited to write a commentary for the commemorative scrapbook. You may also send a free postcard with Childe Hassam's Sunset at Sea image, and it will be stamped and  posted by the museum and mailed to your friends. Just drop it in the mail box on the wall.

Isle of Shoals, 1907. Oil on canvas

MEETING CELIA THAXTER: When Celia Thaxter took painting lessons in Boston, given by Frederick Childe Hassam,a friendship ensued and continued on Appeldore. Celia was a published author and poet and her modest cottage was located next to her family's popular resort hotel. Although Celia was known for her exquisite garden, she is better known for hosting a cultural center, a brilliant salon, where artists, literary and musical celebrities were her guests.  
      In addition to Hassam, who was a regular visitor, other literary and artistic luminaries of the day, were enjoying informal morning concerts, lively discussions and evening readings. Too numerous to record here they included Nathanial Hawthorne, celebrated author of The Scarlet Letter and House of Seven Gables, Henry David Thoreau,  philosopher, naturalist, abolitionist, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, best loved-American poet and Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist among the great number of visitors invited to Celia's Salon.   

Moonlight, Childe Hassa, 1892 Photoby Alex Jamison

CHILDE HASSAM AT APPLEDORE: It was during one of those inspired evenings that Celia suggested to Frederick Childe Hassam that his professional name would be more effective if he dropped the first name.  He took her advice and ever after he was known simply as Childe Hassam. 
     The initial interest for Hassam was the exquisite garden of poet, author, and painter and local celebrity, his new friend, Celia Thaxter, Appelore's greatest champion. Hassam loved painting on the island and after frequent visits he purchased a parcel of land from Celia's brother and built a small studio and worked there, but mostly en plein air. Celia and Childe's friendship was a rock solid relationship that lasted from the late 1880s to 1912. 
     Thaxter published An Island Garden in 1894 with illustrations by Hassam. Over four summers Hassam painted Thaxter's garden and the views from her cottage piazza and the exquisite book is a collectible today. The PEM exhibition offers a sustained reverie on nature, the pleasure of painting and a rapturous sense of place and color. Image: MOONLIGHT: Childe Hassam 1892. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Photo by Alex Jamison. 
      PEM IS LOCATED at EAST INDIA SQUARE,  161 Essex Street, SALEM, MA. www.pem.org. Tel: 866.745.1876.  A 124-page exhibition catalog with 100 color illustrations, American Impressionist: Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals, edited by Austen Barron Bailly, PEM's  George Putnam Curator of American Art, and John. W. Coffey, deputy director and curator of American and modern art at the North Carolina Museum of Art, limited edition, is available through the PEM gift shop and online at www.pemshop.com.
     Ta Ta Darlings!!! Coincidentally, THE SALEM ATHENAEUM celebrates Celia's Salon through September 23, 2016. The historic private library shares a common mission with Celia Thaxter: to encourage creativity and share literature, music and are. In the summers, like Celia, the Athenaeum enjoys a lovely garden and Friday salons. Experience an ambiance of art and literature "in the key of sea." Find them at 337 Essex Street, Salem, MA. Learn more at salemathenaeum.net. Polly welcomes email comments from her readers: pollytalknyc@gmail.com.
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CELIA THAXTER; POET BY THE SEA By Polly Guerin

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Monday, August 22, 2016

Celia Thaxter American Poet by the Sea (c) by Polly Guerin

Celia Thaxter in her island garden painted by Childe Hassam

 The incredibly beauty of Celia Thaxter's poetry, inspired by her life on Appledore, one of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire, is a solitary testament to her poignant prose about nature and the sea.

   When I visited her island garden, so painstakingly maintained by the Portsmouth Horticultural Society, it inspired me to think of the patience and endurance of a remarkable woman. Her love for the minutest detail of nature found its way not only into her poetry but also her watercolors and ceramics. Every flower, leaf, bug, slug, sandpiper, seabird and the mighty gray rocks were her intimate friends envisioned into poems that resound with a life well lived by the sound of the sea.
THE SOUND OF THE SEA
At first glance the Isles of Shoals seems very sad, stern and bleak, but to Celia Appledore  was an enchanted island, where her poignant poetry seemed to crest the waves of inspiration by the sound of the sea.

     In our fast paced electronic world one could revive at Appledore and to the imaginative mind, all things become a dreamy tableau of never ending beauty. The eternal sound of the sea on every side seemingly wears away the edge of preoccupation with the mainland; sharp images become blurred and softened like a sketch in charcoal and tranquility takes over the senses.
A SEASIDE SONNETBy Celia Thaxter: As happy dwellers by the seaside hear In every pause the sea’s mysterious sound, The infinite murmur, solemn and profound, Incessant, filling all the atmosphere, Even so I hear you, for you do surround My newly-waking life, and break for aye About the viewless shores, till they resound With echoes of God’s greatness night and day. Refreshed and glad I feel the full flood-tide Fill every inlet of my waiting soul; Long-striving, eager, hope, beyond control, For help and strength at last is satisfied; And you exalt me, like the sounding sea, With ceaseless whispers of eternity.
AN ISLAND GARDEN
Celia reminisces “All flowers had for me such human interest, they were so dear and precious. I wondered how every flower knew what to do and to be; why the morning-glory didn’t forget sometimes, and bear a cluster of elder-bloom, or the elder hand out pennons of gold and purple like the iris; or the goldenrod suddenly blaze out a scarlet plume, the color of the pimpernel, was a mystery to my childish thought. 

     And why did the sweet wild primrose wait till after sunset to unclose its pale yellow buds; why did it unlock its treasure of rich perfume to the night alone? Few flowers bloomed for me upon the lonesome rock; but I made the most of all I had, and neither knew of nor desired more. Ah, how beautiful they were!” (From “Among the Isles of Shoals, by Celia Thaxter, 1873, J.R. Osgood publisher)
A LIFE SANCTIONED BY THE SEALife on the Isles of Shoals, in its remote and pristine beauty vividly colored Celia’s poetry and prose. As I witnessed this sea-locked vista I can tell you that the landscape of the Isles of Shoals has changed little since the time when Thaxter lived there. First as daughter of the lighthouse keeper on White Island Lighthouse and then later on Appledore where her family had the finest island hotel. 

     It became an intellectual and literary Mecca drawing artists like William Morris Hunt and Childe Hassam to the Shoals as well as well known authors. The burden of caring for her brain-damaged child, Karl, and an invalid husband, Levi, must have weighted heavily on her and would surely have been enough to discourage any writer, but Celia was committed to her role as a poet. She wrote with quiet passion of the place and land that she loved most and gave poetry readings daily throughout the summer season at Appledore.
AMERICA’S FAVORITE POETCelia Thaxter (1835-1894) reputation as the most popular of America’s women poets far surpassed many other poets’ names better known today. Although Celia’s fame began to fade, even in the school system that once had made Celia's poems a priority in nature studies, her poetry is regaining its place today new followers who have come to appreciate her beautiful words and poignant sentiments. And now in tribute to this great poet, may you find inspiration and solace; I leave you with an excerpt from Celia Thaxter’s poem “Land-Locked.”
O Earth! Thy summer song of joy may soar
Ringing to heaven in triumph. I but crave
The sad, caressing murmur of the wave
That breaks in tender music on the shore.

The Salem Athenaeum is featuring Celia Thaxter's Salon and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA celebrates American Impressionism with Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals through Nov 6, 2016. www.pem.org.