Isle of Shoals, 1906
Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 1/4”
Signed and dated lower left
Hassam painted periodically at the Isles of Shoals in New Hampshire from the mid-1880s to about 1915. He had gone there to see poet Celia Thaxter and continued his visits after her death. He produced some 400 images of the place he thought of as "a sweet summer dream."
He especially liked the rocks and the sea, because they are "the few things that do not change and they are wonderfully beautiful." Like other American Impressionists, Hassam grounded his fleeting atmospheric effects with a rock-ribbed stability.