The poet who hosted Childe Hassam on her island kept a garden only fifty feet long and fifteen feet wide. Yet the plan of it in her own book numbers fifty-seven kinds of flowers and vines, and painters kept coming to see it.
What you're looking at
A field of red, pink and white flowers fills the bottom of the picture, with long, slender stems beneath them. Behind the flowers you can see rocks, blue water, and a pale sky. One small sailboat drifts in the distance. The National Gallery of Art describes three horizontal bands: green and red flowers, blue and purple rocks and water, and pale blue sky. Hassam's brushwork changes from part to part, with lush red and white strokes for the flowers and long drags of paint for the rocks, and a few patches of bare canvas show along the bottom.
An island where artists gathered
The Isles of Shoals are nine small, rocky, treeless islands off the New Hampshire coast. Hassam knew them through his friend Celia Thaxter, a poet whose house on Appledore Island was, in the museum's words, a summer mecca for writers, painters, illustrators and musicians. Between 1890 and 1894, the year Thaxter died, Hassam painted many works there, some inside her cottage and most outdoors, in or near her much-admired garden.
Where he was looking
The National Gallery says this view centers on Babb's Rock, a favorite spot Hassam painted again and again. The garden takes up the foreground, but he usually left out signs of people, and here the only trace is that distant sailboat.
One detail to look for
Look at the stems. They are long, slender and green, while the flower heads are only dabs of paint. Hassam does not draw each petal. He lets a few strokes of red, pink and white suggest a whole field of blooms.
A book with his pictures
Thaxter's book about her garden, An Island Garden, came out in 1894, the year she died. Its title page reads “with pictures and illuminations by Childe Hassam.”
Where it went next
By 1900 the painting belonged to John Stringer Tilney of Orange, New Jersey, and it stayed with his family until 1965. After passing through a New York gallery and one more private owner, it was bought by Margaret and Raymond Horowitz, who gave it to the National Gallery of Art in a gift begun in 1997 and completed in 2006.