Rocks at Nahant
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.This seascape depicts the rocky coastline of Nahant—a resort town located on a narrow peninsula in Massachusetts Bay, approximately fifteen miles north of Boston. Haseltine, who sketched along New England’s shores from 1859 to 1865, simplified this composition down to its most essential elements: sky, water, and coastal rocks. A leading painter of shoreline rock formations, he was deeply influenced by prominent geologists of the era, notability Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), who saw in New England’s rocky coasts evidence of the glacial activities of the Ice Age. Topographically accurate and meticulously detailed, Rocks at Nahant reveals Haseltine’s interest in both contemporary science and art criticism, notably the writings John Ruskin, who encouraged artists to paint nature in painstaking detail.
Artwork Details
- Title: Rocks at Nahant
- Maker: William Stanley Haseltine (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1835–1900 Rome)
- Date: 1864
- Culture: American
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 12 x 40 inches
Framed 37 x 54 inches - Credit Line: Promised Gift of Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing