Alexander H. Seaverns — Nantucket Artist

A l e x a n d er H . S e a v e rn s - - N a n t u c k et A r t i st

by Robert A. diCurcio

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ALEXANDER H. SEAVERNS (? - 1932) came to Nantucket from Springfield, Massachusetts, in the 1890's to teach drawing in the schools here. Another Nantucket artist, Ruth Haviland Sutton (1898 - 1960), mentions knowing Seaverns in 1926 in Springfield where he was doing wood engravings. Seaverns lived and had a studio at 107 Main Street where he gave lessons in drawing and painting. He designed the seal for the Town of Nantucket, but died in the Alms House in Springfield in 1932.

Among his surviving works is a watercolor of the autumn moors, but of the many Nantucket scenes he is supposed to have painted, the best known was of an old Quakeress in a rocking chair, knitting before the fireplace of an old Nantucket home, with a cat dozing at her feet. The owner and location of this painting is unknown, but in 1899 Henry S. Wyer, photographer and proprietor of Wyer's Corner Art Store on Federal Street, made excellent photolithographic prints of it. Remarkable documentation of the detail of a turn-of-the-century Nantucket fireside is preserved in these Wyer prints.

Recently, a limited number of these Wyer lithographs of the Seaverns painting of the knitting Quaker lady were discovered by Mrs. Lucille Sanguinetti, whose aunt Hannah Hatch operated Wyer's Art Store in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mrs. Sanguinetti has donated these prints to the Art On Nantucket project of the Nantucket Historical Association. Inquiries concerning these prints may be directed to Robert A. diCurcio.

Robert A. diCurcio's forthcoming book Art On Nantucket is being published by the Nantucket Historical Association in cooperation with the Nantucket Historical Trust.