Star island 9x12

I made a 9x12 seascape this week. it is from a photo, I don't usually do things from photos, however the photo had no surf in it, having been taken on a calm day. I invented the surf and I shoved the rocks around a lot. I always invent surf. I have painted many seascapes and it just doesn't photograph so that it looks right to me . A lot of surf painting presents similar challenges to snow painting. However it flops about as you paint it.

I owed a favor to the folks that run Star Island . I made this painting for them. The island bears a large19th century hotel owned by the Unitarian church ( no I am not ) and located about 10 miles off of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They invited me to paint out there with a group of other artists and let us stay and work for a couple of days. They fed us too.

I am particularly interested in this place as it is part of the Isles of Shoals archipelago. The next island a half mile over is Appledore where Childe Hassam painted so many of the early paintings that made him famous. He stayed there at an inn run by Celia Thaxter who was a well known poet.
It was she who convinced him to drop his first name, Fredrick for his far more romantic sounding middle name, Childe. For an artist, having a weird name never hurts.
Here is a Childe Hassam painted out on Appledore.

image; artrenewal.org

Besides being the inspiration for this joyous painting, Appledore was also the location of one of the darker episodes in the history of New England painting. It involved the most important of the Boston painters before the Tarbell and Benson era, portrait painter William Morris Hunt. Hunt was the brother of Richard Morris Hunt, famous 19th century architect who designed the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Biltmore the largest mansion in the nation, for the Vanderbilts.
William Morris Hunt had studied in Europe under Coture and Millet. Hunt was an influence on a whole generation of New England painters, bringing the ideas of the Barbizon painters back from his 12 years of study in France. Here's the cheerful looking visage of Mr. Hunt below.
image; artrenewal.org

In 1879 Hunt visited Appledore to recover from a bout with depression. His drowned body was found in a pond on the island by Celia Thaxter herself. Although his death was probably a suicide, that has been disputed as he walked with a cane and some argued in his day that he simply fell in.

Do you think women liked that look back then? I think that long beard and bald pate make him look like his head is on upside down.