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A Review by Raymond B. Agler
THE OCTOBER, 1982, issue of Antiques Magazine printed the following article by Raymond B. Agler, of the Boston Public Library, concerning this new addition to the literature of Nantucket.
ART ON NANTUCKET, The History of Painting on Nantucket Island, by Robert A. diCurcio, intro. by Stuart P. Feld. xvi + 269 pp., color pis., bibliography, appendixes, indexes. (Nantucket Historical Association in cooperation with the Nantucket Historical Trust, 2 Union St., Nantucket, MA 02554; $250 plus $5 for postage and handling)
The POLLARD limner's strong, disquieting portrait of Mary Gardner Coffin of 1717 introduces this history of Nantucket art. In its harsh angularities are caught the sitter's high seriousness and flinty character, typical of the first generation of settlers who chose to eke out a living on those lonely moors. This place and its people have animated the imagination and creativity of numerous artists in the ensuing two and a half centuries, though, curiously, with the exception of the Nantucket works of Eastman Johnson, the sumptuous legacy of paintings from Nantucket's past has been accorded slight mention in the literature of American art. It is a large and diverse body of work, long known and loved by the islanders and the summer visitors to Nantucket's museums and galleries. One of those summer people decided that the artistic heritage of Nantucket deserved a full and careful study. This book is his considerable accomplishment.
Financial support for this ambitious project was generously provided by the Nantucket Historical Trust. It was decided that profits from the sale of the book would be reserved for a special curatorial fund for cleaning, restoring, and maintaining the rich collections of the Nantucket Historical Association. In the autumn of 1979 Robert diCurcio was provided with a studio, the best photographic equipment, and the good will and encouragement of Nantucketers everywhere. Now, three years of intensive work has produced a result deserving of high praise indeed.
This is a lavishly illustrated book which succeeds admirably as a photographic tour through the history of Nantucket painting from the beginning of the eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth century. The criterion for inclusion as a Nantucket artist was simply to have "painted a picture of an identifiable Nantucket subject." The work of some one hundred artists (none living) is illustrated, with an accompanying succinct, gracefully written narrative. The opening chapter,
"ART ON NANTUCKET"
7 "First Flowering", treats early portraiture, marine painting, and early views, with a brief consideration of mourning pictures, scrimshaw, and China Trade paintings.
Chapter Two, "Portraits from the Golden Age of Whaling", was a special delight for me. It explores portraiture from the postRevolutionary War period to the mid-nineteenth century. Here are found Carolus Bruno Donatus Delin's roguish portraits of Nantucket sea captains, the charming primitive likenesses Sally Gardner painted for her neighbors, and a wealth of portraits by the two great masters of Nantucket portraiture, William Swain and James Hathaway. The picture captions comprise a Nantucket Who Was Who. Among the prominent Coffins, Folgers, Gardners, and Starbucks one encounters Swain's startling likeness of Timothy Clapp and Hathaway's enigmatic Mystery Woman, or Lady in Cement (too good an anecdote to give away). DiCurcio's detective work in sorting out dubious attributions to Sally Gardner and his seminal presentation of the work of Hathaway are valuable contributions to the history of nineteenth-century portraiture.
"Scenes of Nostalgia for the Past", Chapter Three, surveys Nantucket's rise as a fashionable summer haven away from the noise and smoke of the industrial revolution, a role it performs today for streetweary refugees from the mainland. In this chapter and throughout the book, the reader is introduced to excellent artists currently little known off-island. Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin is surely one of the most exciting of these. Her study with Thomas Eakins is evident in the kinetic tension of her human figures and her effective use of light to create a mood. Coffin's Nantucket works are about human relationships perceived at a moment frozen in time. Her luminous landscapes and portraits reveal volumes about a place and time gone from us. The author's perceptive essay on Eastman Johnson rounds out this chapter. In all, he illustrates and discusses twenty of Johnson's paintings and studies, many of them never before published.
Chapters Four and Five take us from the turn of the century into the 1950's. The impressionists Childe Hassam and Theodore Robinson, both of whom studied in France, were among the increasingly sophisticated artists who painted on Nantucket at the close of the last century, attracted by the island's natural beauty and rustic charm. The best of these artists were inspired to paint landscapes, seascapes, and town views far surpassing the work produced at most resort colonies. Hassam's Old Doorway, Nantucket, painted about 1882, and Tony Sarg's Petticoat Row, Center Street of 1929 are highlights of this intense artistic activity, which prompts the author to draw a parallel between Nantucket at the turn of the century and the artists' retreat at Barbizon in France.
