In the Garden (Celia Thaxter in Her Garden)
Item
-
Name
-
In the Garden (Celia Thaxter in Her Garden)
-
Summary
-
Childe Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine, drawing artistic inspiration from the rocky coast and brilliant wildflowers that grew there. Every year, he and a group of musicians, writers, and artists made
an informal colony based at the home of the poet Celia Thaxter. Among this prominent circle of friends were novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and artist William Morris Hunt. Art, music, gardening, poetry readings, and intellectual banter were part of Thaxter’s everyday life on Appledore, where she and her family operated a hotel, the Appledore House.
Hassam’s painting shows Thaxter strolling through her garden, pausing to admire the many beautiful wildflowers that have flourished thanks to her care. She spent several hours each day tending to her garden, renowned for its beauty. It provided inspiration for her 1894 memoir, An Island Garden, which Hassam illustrated. The myriad of flowers Thaxter walks through seem to mimic the undulating waves of the ocean in the distance, the summer sea breeze gently swaying the flowers and grasses side to side. Of her flowers, Thaxter wrote, “Ever since I could remember anything, flowers have been like dear friends to me, comforters, inspirers, powers to uplift and to cheer. A lonely child, living on the lighthouse island...every blade of grass that sprang out of the ground, every humblest weed, was precious in my sight.”
Sailboats glide across the water in the background, their white sails unfurled with the ocean breeze. A rustic split-rail fence is barely visible under the weight of numerous blooms, which creep up the sides of the composition, creating a framing device for the figure of Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter’s gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors of impressionist art he had acquired in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore’s brief summer. The painting evokes the leisurely, seasonal rhythms of America’s privileged families in the years before World War I, known as the Gilded Age. Situated on an island, this scene seems far removed from the larger issues Americans faced at the time, such as income inequality and mass immigration. (Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum)
-
Date
-
1892
-
Dimensions
-
22 1⁄4 x 18 in. (56.5 x 45.7 cm.)
-
Provenance
-
Gift of John Gellatly
-
Identifier
-
1929.6.52
-
Rights
-
