By Lois Williams

There’s only a month left to see the “Childe Hassam at the Isles of Shoals” exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts – it closes November 6.  Many Shoalers have seen it, and there are even a couple of instances of Shoalers meeting other Shoalers at the exhibit.

Not to fret if you miss the exhibit – there is a copy of the exhibition catalogue in the Vaughn Cottage Library, and next summer while you are at Star you can spend time with the book’s 44 plates of exhibition paintings.

Hassam painted at Appledore for 30 years, and his 300 Appledore pictures represented ten percent of his lifetime art.  Hassam painted his popular pictures of Celia Thaxter, Celia’s parlor and Celia’s garden and its poppies before her death.  Afterward, Hassam’s interest turned to scenes of Appledore’s rocks, and these paintings constitute most of the Peabody Essex exhibit.

Even those who have seen the exhibit will appreciate the exhibition catalogue.  There is a map showing the spot from which Hassam painted each of the exhibition pictures as well as the site that he was painting.  And, for each painting, there is a photograph of the scene – showing, as the books says, that within Hassam’s exuberance of color and brush strokes, “He gets his rocks right.”

Peabody Essex Museum
East India Square (161 Essex St)
Salem, Massachusetts 01970
(978) 745-9500
www.pem.org

All photos courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.