Childe Play
Intersections, as I use the word here, refers to cross-connections between locations such as streets, or larger categories such as islands. It can also refer to the connections, intentional or otherwise, between artists. This post will connect five images from different times and places. The painting shown above is of a location on Appledore Island, Maine. This small island is the site of the Isles of Shoals Marine Laboratory which is an educational and research facility now jointly operated by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire. Appledore Island also has a rich history in the late 19th century as a summer gathering place for artists, including the American Impressionist Childe Hassam. I’ve always had a fondness for Hassam’s cityscapes and seascapes. I was fortunate to make many trips to Appledore while I was teaching at Cornell. When I started doing oil pastel paintings about 15 years ago, I had the thought that I’d try my hand at an Appledore seascape, but it took me many years to get around to it and also obtain a reference photo to my liking which was produced on my last trip to Appledore. While working on the painting, I made a conscious effort to loosen my technique to pay homage to Hassam’s style of brushwork. The painting title is an expression of that effort.
A couple of years ago I decided to determine the exact island location I photographed and painted, but more importantly, determine whether Hassam had painted the same spot. I enlisted the help of a friend (Dr. Hal Weeks) who has taught on Appledore for many years and has also catalogued all of the island locations of Hassam’s paintings. This was a painstaking effort, but the results were included in a museum show a few years ago. Hal’s determination was that the location I painted is a geological feature now known as Broadway and 42nd Street. This is not a name used in Hassam’s time. It also turned out that Hassam painted the same area (although from a different point of view) and called it “The South Gorge”. Here is his painting and a recent photograph for comparison.
Childe Hassam-The South Gorge 
North-south trap dike at Broadway and 42nd © 2015 Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM
Now it gets interesting. Hassam painted many cityscapes, including some very well-known ones, in New York City. One is titled “Broadway and 42nd Street.” Here it is:
Childe Hassam-Broadway and 42nd Street
Just to complete the circle in this discussion, I did a cityscape a few years before the Appledore painting. The location is NYC and it shows the intersection of Broadway and Spring Street. Too bad I didn’t chose a location further uptown.
Down Broadway
Always refreshing to see new examples of your work. I marvel at the scope of the subjects. Taxicab traffic to rocks in streams. Happy New Year to you and your family.
I have found memories of Shoals from a teacher workshop in the ’70s. It was beautiful, we were attacked by the seagulls, the lobster on the beach dinner at the end of the week was phenomenal. Thanks for sharing your rendition of that beautiful area.
Ed, thanks for this wonderful post — full of fascinating images, and with so much intriguing information about your work and that of Childe Hassam. Very interesting to see your shoals drawing with your looser style in honor of Hassam. I would love to know the relative sizes of your drawing and Hassam’s painting.
And your NYC view is also wonderful; I notice that though the foreground is in your signature photorealistic style, as one moves to the distance the view comes closer and closer to a more “Hassam-esque” approach.
Thanks for looking Steve, Nancy, and Margy.
To answer Margy’s question. Hassan’s Appledore painting is 23-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches.
Mine is approximately half that size. If I became “Hassan-esque” in the cityscape, it’s mostly the result of my inability to add really fine detail with the medium at that scale. I try, but the displayed resolution makes it look more impressionistic than I intended. I attached three fun details from Down Broadway to the end of my post.
These works speaks to my heart and love of the great painter Henry Ossawa Tanner. The waves in Childes Play look like the waves in his painting that hangs in the White House called Sand Dunes. The work Childes Play also speaks to my live of 19th Century Painter–Winslow Homer in Breezin Up. This painting is also in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
The shadows and light on 42nd Street are similar to the use of light in Henry Ossawa Tanner’s the Banjo Lesson. I especially admire the capture on sunlight on the rocks in the painting Childes Play. Also my favorite Scientist, Ernest Everett Just, a biologist who studied in this area. He went on to become one of the greatest biologists in the 20th Century.