Historic Nantucket Summer 2019, Vol. 69, No. 3 by Nantucket Historical Association

SMITHSONIAN EXHIBIT CATALOG 3 | NEW FINE ART GALLERY CATALOG 19

SUMMER 2019â&#x20AC;&#x2030; VOLUME 69, NO.3

SUMMER 2019

VOLUME 69, NO. 3

BOARD OF TRUSTEES, 2019–20 Kelly Williams, PRESIDENT Victoria McManus, VICE PRESIDENT David Worth, VICE PRESIDENT William J. Boardman, TREASURER FRIENDS OF THE NHA PRESIDENT

Sarah Alger, CLERK Nancy Abbey Patricia Anathan

SUMMER HOURS OF OPERATION: May 25 – September 2

Susan Blount Anne Marie Bratton Chip Carver Olivia Charney Wylie Collins Amanda Cross

Whaling Museum

Annabelle Fowlkes

Open Daily, 9 A.M. – 5 P.M.

Cam Gammill

Historic Homes

Wendy Hudson

Open Daily, 9 A.M. – 5 P.M. (Hadwen House, Thomas Macy House, and Greater Light)

Carl Jelleme

Graham Goldsmith

Carla McDonald Franci Neely, FRIENDS OF THE NHA VICE PRESIDENT

Historic Sites

Britt Newhouse

Open Daily, 11 A.M. – 4 P.M. (Oldest House, Old Mill, Quaker Meeting House, and Old Gaol)

Marla Sanford Janet Sherlund, TRUSTEE EMERITA Carter Stewart Melinda Sullivan

Open Year – Round, Tuesday- Friday, 10 A.M. – 4 P.M. Free and Open to the Public

Jason Tilroe

Whitney Gallery Open Daily, 11 A.M. – 4P.M.

PR I NT E D I N T H E U SA O N R E CY C L E D PA PE R , U S I N G V EG E TAB L E-B AS E D I N K

Research Library

Phoebe Tudor Finn Wentworth Alisa Wood Ex Officio James Russell, GOSNELL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

HISTORIC NANTUCKET (ISSN 0439-2248) is published by the Nantucket Historical Association, 15 Broad Street, Nantucket, Massachusetts. Periodical postage paid at Nantucket, MA, and additional entry offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Historic Nantucket, P.O. Box 1016, Nantucket, MA 02554–1016; (508) 228–1894; fax: (508) 228–5618, ask@nha.org. For information visit nha.org. ©2019 by the Nantucket Historical Association. Editor: Ashley Santos, Associate Director of Marketing Designer: Amanda Quintin, Amanda Quintin Design a l l p h o t o s b y n h a s ta f f u n l e s s o t h e r w i s e n o t e d .

A MESSAGE FROM THE GOSNELL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR In this special issue of Historic Nantucket we explore two exhibitions currently on view in the new Fine Arts Wing at the Whaling Museum. The Nantucket Historical Association is excited to present Modern American Realism: Highlights from the Sara Roby Foundation Collection, on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), and Two Hundred Years of American Art on Nantucket, an exhibit comprised of important pieces from the NHA’s collections as well as many loaned from the collections of our supporters. The new Fine Arts Wing is part of the ongoing work of the NHA to activate more of its space for public enjoyment and provide more exhibition space for the collections under our stewardship. The Board of Trustees decided to repurpose the first floor space in the Peter Foulger Building, which was originally erected as museum space in the 1970s, to provide substantial exhibition space to allow the NHA to illuminate the impact of art on the Island community and tell related stories. This new gallery, which is named the Williams Forsyth Gallery, pairs with the McCausland Gallery on the museum’s second floor to create a wing for rotating exhibits drawn from the NHA’s own collections as well those loaned to the NHA. Major upgrades to the space were required in order to prepare the museum to house collections of high caliber. On display in the McCausland Gallery, Modern American Realism: Highlights from the Sara Roby Foundation Collection, was curated by Virginia Mecklenberg, Chief Curator at SAAM, and arranged by Edwin Rudd, Director of Facilities at the NHA. Major underwriting came from Bonnie and Peter McCausland and the Sara Roby Foundation. The outstanding collection was judiciously built over time by the late Nantucket resident and artist Sara Roby. Interestingly,

Ribbon cutting of the new Williams Forsyth Gallery in the Whaling Museum on June 14, 2019 at the Fine Arts Wing Dinner. Left to right: Kelly Williams, NHA Board President and her husband Andrew Forsyth. Janet Sherlund, Trustee Emerita, William J. Boardman, NHA Board Treasurer, Victoria McManus, NHA Board Vice President, and Jay Wilson, President of the Friends of the NHA.

a selection of her collection was first exhibited by the NHA at the Fair Street Museum in 1984. Reggie Levine, President of the Nantucket Arts Council for many years, remembered Sara Roby for her keen eye and passion for the arts. Reggie was honored to have part of her collection on view in his Main Street Gallery before she donated it to the Smithsonian. On reviewing the list of artists, Reggie confirmed that he knew many of them personally. Paul Cadmus, in particular, spent much time on the island and had many longtime connections with its residents. Two Hundred Years of American Art on Nantucket was curated by Anne Knutson, Ph.D., and is on view in the new Williams Forsyth Gallery. This exhibit provides an overview of the rich history of artists who chose Nantucket as their subject. To assist her in identifying important artwork to include, Anne established an advisory committee comprised of Robert Frazier, Artistic Director of the Artists Association of Nantucket, Benjamin Simons, Director of the Academy Art Museum and former Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator at the NHA, John Sylvia of Sylvia Antiques, and Steve Langer, Continued on page 2

Chair of the Friends of the NHA Acquisitions Committee. Appropriately for this inaugural exhibition, her inclusive approach of reaching out to collectors was received with much enthusiasm, allowing the museum to display significant works by important artists that are not often available to the public. These works, when coupled with the NHA’s holdings, many of which were purchased by the Friends of the NHA, make for an exhibition that is comprehensive, resonant, and compelling. The Fine Arts Wing is anchored on the first floor and named in honor of Board President Kelly Williams and her husband, Andrew Forsyth, whose leadership gift spearheaded this initiative. Kelly and Andrew are passionate about supporting this critical initiative at the NHA to provide world-class gallery space for exhibits. They share a strong belief that the story of Nantucket’s art colony and its redemptive impact on the fortunes of the Island is an instructive one for any community looking to reposition its economy. Architect Robert Miklos of designLAB and general contractor Scott Andersen did a masterful job creating a gallery that seamlessly flows into adjacent spaces. In addition to the above, numerous smaller exhibits populate the NHA’s various galleries and properties. Dan Elias, guest curator and known by many from hosting the Antiques Road Show, created an encyclopedic exhibit titled Nantucket and the World in the Candle Factory. Major upgrades to installations in Gosnell Hall create a reimagined experience of Nantucket’s rich whaling history. In the Whitney Gallery at the Research Library, Esta-Lee Stone led a team in developing an exhibit examining Jewish life on Nantucket. At Hadwen House, we again tapped Dan Elias to reimagine both floors. Rather than recreating period rooms, he focused on highlighting the decorative arts within the NHA collection. Furniture, textiles, ceramics, and silver collections inhabit the first floor in new and creative

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

ways. Dan then focused his efforts on the second floor, where he and the team converted the five bedrooms into galleries that tell Nantucket stories, with one developed in partnership with the Nantucket Preservation Trust focusing on Nantucket’s distinctive architecture. In continuing our theme of collaboration, we were proud to work with the Artists Association of Nantucket to display public sculptures by noted artist Seward Johnson, which adorn the Hadwen House garden, the Research Library, and Broad Street and allow for engagement with art that is whimsical and fun. The context for this expansive exhibition schedule stems from the new Strategic Plan recently adopted by the Board of Trustees. Key tenets of this include community building via storytelling, seeking the highest and best use of properties, and caring for our collection, all under the rubric of adhering to our fiduciary responsibility. We hope the updates provided in this issue of Historic Nantucket evidence the progress the NHA team has made in executing on the vision provided in the Strategic Plan. The NHA’s hardworking, enthusiastic, and dedicated staff deserve much credit for the major improvements we hope you will enjoy throughout the summer. We want to thank all of those who have supported these ambitious undertakings to make our properties more accessible and more comprehensive in their ability to tell important Nantucket stories. We encourage everyone to provide feedback, and we welcome support as we continue to raise money for the capital campaign, which underpins this important work.

James Russell Gosnell Executive Director

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION Curated by Virginia Mecklenburg, Chief Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum Nantucket is a study in contrasts. Despite the seeming uniformity of its gray houses, the island has an independent, free-thinking spirit. Into this milieu came Sara Roby, a long-time Nantucket summer resident who lived on island full time toward the end of her life. Roby was an heiress and painter who refused to be bound by current fads. Championing realism in the 1950s was a daring and defiant act. Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem De Kooning, and other abstract expressionists were the art stars of the day. Flinging and pouring paint, they created huge canvases that bore little resemblance to the natural world. Concerned that figurative art was being eclipsed, Roby established a foundation to collect art that reflected the classic principles of form and design she had learned as an art student, first in Philadelphia and later with Reginald Marsh and Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League in New York. Roby and her advisors recognized that the beauty and spirituality, as well as the tensions, of modern life allowed for many kinds of realism. They bought paintings by Edward Hopper and Robert Vickrey that probe the angst and psychological dislocation associated with existential thought in the 1950s. Leavening these unsettling images are canvases by Isabel Bishop and Phillip Evergood, whose empathy and sense of social responsibility had emerged during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Formed in the mid-1950s, the collection captures both the optimism and the apprehension of the years following World War II. Many of the works are poignant, others whimsical. Still others challenge us to decipher meaning imbedded in difficult, sometimes enigmatic scenes. The collection is a reflection of the multivalent realities of contemporary life, of human emotion at its most elemental and universal.

ABOUT SARA ROBY Artist Sara Roby lived on Orange Street and then Liberty Street until her passing 30 years ago. She was a strong supporter of many local arts and cultural organizations through the mid-and-late-twentieth century. In addition, she was an avid collector and amassed a remarkable collection of early-and-mid-twentieth century American artists. As early as 1953, she supported artists both on island and off through the purchase and exhibition of their work. Her collection was given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in 1986. Sara Mary Barnes Roby was a granddaughter of Henry Fownes, creator of Oakmont Country Club golf course and daughter of John Barnes, “First-Founder” of Pine Valley Golf Club. He owned two companies in Pennsylvania and so Sara inherited chairperson positions at both. She attended Vassar for a period and then studied art in New York, with a studio next to Salvador Dali at Carnegie Hall. On Nantucket she excelled at golf and was a member at Sankaty Head Golf Club. Her painting skills were only surpassed by her eye for collecting. Modern American Realism: Highlights from the Sara Roby Foundation Collection is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with generous support from the Sara Roby Foundation, Bonnie and Peter McCausland, Kelly Williams & Andrew Forsyth, and Jason Tilroe. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports SAAM’s traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Robert Birmelin, born Newark, NJ, 1933 Dalles Dam, Evening Acrylic on canvas, 33 ½” x 53 ½” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.4 Robert Birmelin was invited to create a painting of an American landscape for the country’s 1976 bicentennial celebration and was offered various possibilities. He chose to travel the Oregon side of the Columbia River. “Driving through the changing ecosystems from Portland going east to the grasslands was an unforgettable experience,” he said. “I made sketches and took photographs along the way. When I reached the Dalles and viewed the dam from an overlooking hillside I knew that was the spot for me. I rented a room in a motel from which I had a good view on the river and the Dalles Dam, remaining for over a week painting many small studies from the hillside, taking photos and exploring the surrounding landscape. My aim was to be as true as I could be to the impressive scale of the dam in relation to the sweep of the river and surrounding bluffs.”

Isabel Bishop, Cincinnati, OH, 1902 – New York City, 1988 Students, Entrance to Union Square 1980 Oil on plywood, 30” x 28 ½” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1985.30.2 Bishop moved from Ohio to New York in 1918, hoping to become an illustrator. But her teachers, Kenneth Hayes Miller and Guy Pène du Bois, instead encouraged her to paint the life in the streets around her. In 1934 she leased a studio at Union Square. From the windows, she observed and recorded the everyday activities of the homeless and working people of the city as well as the university students who frequented the neighborhood. Bishop met Sara Roby through Kenneth Hayes Miller and, when Roby established her foundation in the early 1950s, she invited Bishop to be a member of her board. She remained a key advisor to the foundation until the collection was given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1986.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Isabel Bishop, Cincinnati, OH, 1902 - New York City, 1988 Artist’s Table, 1931 Oil on canvas, 14 5/8” 17 ½” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.6 Bishop’s impeccable draftsmanship and the subtle tonalities of her palette brought her recognition in the 1930s as one of the outstanding urban realists of the Fourteenth Street School, a group named for the area where she, Reginald Marsh, Raphael Soyer, and several other artist friends portrayed the local scene. Artist’s Table represents a personal moment. The casual disarray and partly opened drawer of the painting table offer an intimate glimpse into the artist’s private space.

Isabel Bishop, Cincinnati, OH, 1902 – New York City, 1988 Mending, 1945 Oil on fiberboard, 25 1/8” x 16 7/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.7 “I have worked for more than twenty years in a studio at the north west corner of Union Square, New York. I have noticed regular denizens of the Square who, sitting on the benches or on the fountain, eating, sewing or rearranging their worldly goods in paper bundles, seem to be leading the most private of lives, entirely oblivious to the public character of the place. The not-beautiful forms of the fountain seem . . . to make a throne for the old man sewing his trousers; his billowing old overcoat [becomes] a robe.” —Isabel Bishop

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Charles Burchfield, Ashtabula Harbor, OH, 1893 – West Seneca, 1967 Night of the Equinox, 1917; reworked 1955 Watercolor, brush and ink, gouache, and charcoal on paper 40 1/8” x 52 1/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.86 Charles Burchfield used landscape forms as symbols to convey the dreams and memories of his childhood. Night of the Equinox captures a violent storm he witnessed as a boy in Salem, Ohio. Driving rain pours from ominous clouds, and fantastical trees dance in the electrified air. Even the windows seem terrified by the tempest. The artist remembered the experience as “one of the most exciting weather events of the whole year. What we called the spring equinoctial storm. It seemed as if terrific forces were abroad in the land.” Burchfield first developed the personal style he called “romantic fantasy” as a scholarship student at the Cleveland School of Art. Most of his early watercolors—he seldom painted in oil—are haunting scenes of nature in which graphic marks become pictorial indicators of feelings. Late in his life Burchfield reworked watercolors he painted in his youth, including Night of the Equinox, enlarging them by adding sections of paper to the original sheets.

Arthur Dove, Canandaigua, NY, 1880 – Huntington, NY, 1946 Car Across the Street, 1940 Pen and ink and watercolor on paper, 5 ½” x 8 7/8”

Arthur Dove, Canandaigua, NY, 1880 – Huntington, NY, 1946 Oil Tanker II, 1932 Watercolor and conte crayon on paper, 4 7/8” x 6 7/8”

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation

1986.6.24

1986.6.25

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Arthur Dove, Canandaigua, NY, 1880 – Huntington, NY, 1946 Untitled (Landscape), Ca. 1938 Ink and watercolor on paper 5 1/2“ x 9 1/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1993.22.1 Arthur Dove began creating small watercolors as studies for larger paintings early in his career, but in the 1930s came to appreciate them as independent works of art and began to include them in exhibitions. Lyrical color and freely sketched forms reveal Dove’s impulsive, ofthe-moment response to nature and his surroundings.

Arthur Dove, Canandaigua, NY, 1880 – Huntington, NY, 1946 Untitled (Centerport), 1941 Watercolor, gouache, ink and pencil on paper 4 1/8” x 5 3/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1993.22.2 Dove was one of the pioneering abstract painters of the early twentieth century. He initially worked as a magazine illustrator, but in Paris in 1908, he discovered Matisse, the Fauves, and the Cubists as well as ideas about art that stressed spiritual expression. Throughout his work, Dove translated natural forms, sounds, and musical motifs into evocative paintings. His watercolors of the 1930s and 1940s, in which he wove imagery “into a sequence of formations” analogous to musical harmonies, are among his most delicate and beautiful works.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Philip Evergood, New York City, 1902 – Bridgewater, CT, 1973 Dowager in a Wheelchair, 1952 Oil on fiberboard, 47 7/8” x 36” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.90 Recollecting the scene that prompted him to paint Dowager in a Wheelchair, Evergood said “Once I saw a tragic old lady being wheeled on Madison Avenue. She was alive in spirit but her body was only half functioning. She wanted still to be young. A young, gentle, fascinatingly fresh companion was wheeling her. As I passed, spring was in the air, a delicate whiff of lilac perfume mixed with a faint background of crushed rose petals reached my nostrils & then my brain. I was disturbed. I stopped when they’d passed and followed their progress through the crowds with my eyes. Taxis & cars were too noisy. I lost sight of them in a few moments. I went sadly on my way with a vivid memory which lingered on. I consider the painting to be one of the very best I ever painted.” Evergood grew up in England but in 1923 moved back to New York City. For him the 1930s were years of deep personal involvement in liberal and radical causes. As managing supervisor of WPA easel project of New York, he fought, he fought aggressively to keep artists on the payroll when budget cuts forced layoffs. Evergood’s art, like his political activities, reflected his commitment to egalitarian ideals and sympathy for human frailty.

Rose Mary Gonnella-Butler, born Jersey City, NJ, 1957 Purple Interior with Window, 1983 Colored pencil and pencil, 25” x 16 5/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1985.30.7

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Sondra Freckelton, born Dearborn, MI, 1936 Harvest, 1978 Watercolor and pencil on paper, 44” x 57 5/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.32 Freckelton began making abstract sculptures in wood and plastic as a student. Although she met with resounding success, in the early 1970s she began painting realistic still lifes in watercolor that capture the quiet beauty of domestic, often feminized objects—garden implements, household objects, and fresh produce gathered from her garden in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, and quilts that “are the quiet work of housewives and artisans.” Her subjects, she said, speak “about life—about how we slept, ate and dreamed and lived.” In Harvest vegetables spill onto an antique quilt, a hand-made reminder of the interweaving of generations and a celebration of the beauty of ordinary life.

Rose Mary Gonnella-Butler, born Jersey City, NJ, 1957 Violet Interior with Lamp, 1983 Colored pencil and pencil, 16 ½” x 24 5/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1985.30.8 Following undergraduate work at Rutgers University, Gonnella-Butler completed an MFA degree in painting and drawing at Rochester Institute of Technology and studied computer graphics at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She served as an instructor at Rutgers, Kean College, and the Newark Museum Studio School. Gonnella-Butler is fascinated with simple shapes and employs delicate color harmonies to suggest questions of time, impermanence, and change. She sets simple stilllife arrangements and household objects into domestic scenes, and through altered scale, artificially arranged light, and manipulated space, her interiors take on the atmosphere of doll houses.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Nancy Grossman, born New York City, 1940 Cob I, 1980 Carved wood, leather, nails paint, horn, and lead 17 ¾” x 9 ¼” x 10 ½” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.38 Throughout her career Nancy Grossman has been concerned with the repression of identity and the dehumanization of the individual in contemporary society. In the 1960s she began carving wooden heads that she painted and covered in leather. The demon-like horns projecting from the cranium and the metal studs that serve as eyes in Cob I transmute the individual within into a creature whose individuality has been concealed and speech silenced.

Gaston Lachaise, Paris, France, 1882 – New York City, 1935 Head of a Woman, 1935 Bronze on marble base, 15 ¼” x 8 ½” x 10” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.51 In 1906, with thirty dollars in his pocket and no knowledge of English, Gaston Lachaise left France for Boston in pursuit of Isabel, who would later become his wife and model. After six years working on civil war memorial statues, he became a studio assistant to Paul Manship, the country’s leading art deco sculptor. Head of a Woman is a stylized portrait of Isabel as muse. She was, Lachaise said, “the primary inspiration that awakened my vision and the leading influence that has directed my forces.”

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Richard Mayhew, born Amityville, NY, 1934 Nature Solitude II, 1969 Pen and ink on paper, 17 ½” x 23 7/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1985.30.39 “How do you interpret landscape with a feeling?” asks Mayhew. “Many of my so-called landscapes are very abstract because they are very free-form; I am involved with the spiritual feeling of space.” The brushy forms of land and trees in Nature Solitude II are hauntingly familiar, even though Mayhew gives no clues to the location. Instead he created an image that transcends the momentary and quotidian. Mayhew appreciated the expressive potential of abstract art; he hung out at the Cedar Bar with Franz Kline, Norman Lewis, and Willem de Kooning. But the early 1960s were a conflicted time for him as for many African Americans and, in 1963, shortly before the March on Washington, he, Emma Amos, Romare Bearden, Felrath Hines, and several other black artists formed a group they called Spiral to discuss what they could and should do to advance the cause of civil rights. Though Bearden and Amos tackled culturally and racially charged subjects, Mayhew chose not to make art with a social message. Instead, as in Nature Solitude II, he created contemplative, meditative places.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Kenneth Hayes Miller, Oneida, NY, 1876 – New York City, 1952 Bargain Hunters, 1940 Oil on canvas, 30 7/8” x 36 1/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.65 During the forty years Kenneth Hayes Miller taught at the Art Students’ League in New York City, he encouraged a generation of American painters, including Isabel Bishop, Paul Cadmus, and Reginald Marsh, as well as patron and collector Sara Roby to find inspiration in contemporary life. For his own subjects, Miller looked to the shoppers, salesgirls, and strollers he encountered around Fourteenth Street and Union Square in New York City. In Bargain Hunters, he captured the crush of femininity on sale day. Though moving through the crowd presents a challenge, the women’s eyes sparkle with the excitement of bargain hunting.

Guy Pène du Bois, Brooklyn, NY, 1884 – Boston, MA, 1958 Shovel Hats, 1923 Oil on plywood, 20 x 14 ¾” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.27 Although he was originally from Brooklyn, Pène du Bois made his artistic debut at the 1905 Paris Salon. After the death of his father the following year, he returned to New York and went to work as the art critic for the New York American. For the next fifteen years, he used the pages of the American and Arts and Decoration magazine to champion Edward Hopper and other artists whose innovative work challenged the traditional norms of New York’s academic art community. Pène du Bois’s own paintings are highly stylized vignettes that show affluent members of society enjoying leisure moments at the opera, the race track, in chic nightclub that often caricatured what he called “symbols of sophistication.” In Shovel Hats he caricatured the fashionista’s craving for the latest millinery craze.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Bernard Perlin, Richmond, VA, 1918 – Ridgefield, CT, 2014 The Farewell, 1952 Casein on fiberboard, 34 1/8” x 47 1/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1896.6.70 During World War II, Perlin worked for the graphics division of the Office of War Information and subsequently became an artist-correspondent for Life and later Fortune. Not until 1946 did he begin to paint seriously. Perlin created The Farewell when he was living in Italy, supported partially by Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships. The spidery network of tree limbs and the soft crimson forest floor are a beautiful study of line and color. A couple walking toward the left side of the canvas and a single figure at right introduce a narrative note. The painting’s title poignantly links the figures even as it indicates their parting.

Hugo Robus, Cleveland, OH, 1885 – New York City, 1964 One and Another, 1934 Bronze on wood base, 28 ¾” x 43 7/8” x 23 3/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.72 Hugo Robus explored simple themes a woman washing her hair, a girl reading, a woman balancing a jug of water on her head. One and Another shows a mother with her baby. The stylized design and polished surface reflect Robus’s early training as a jeweler before he turned initially to painting, and subsequently to sculpture. He conceived the figures individually, but placed them so that the mother’s body protectively envelops the child, whose small arm reaches toward her face. Viewed from the side, their overlapping silhouettes trace the double oval of the infinity symbol, an eternal reminder of the interdependence of mother and child.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Theodore Roszak, Poznan, Poland, 1907 – New York City, 1981 The Great Moth, 1955 Pen and ink, ink wash, and pencil on paper, 68 ½” x 28 ½” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.73

Katherine Schmidt, Xenia, OH, 1898 – Sarasota, FL, 1978 Man with Coffee Cup, 1935 Pen and ink and pencil on paper, 11 1/8” x 7 5/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.77 At age thirteen Katherine Schmidt persuaded her reluctant parents to allow her to attend Saturday art classes. After high school she worked with Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League, where she met Yasuo Kuniyoshi, to whom she was married for thirteen years. She exhibited frequently during the 1920s and 1930s to favorable reviews. Like Isabel Bishop and other artists who frequented the neighborhood around Fourteenth Street and Union Square, Schmidt found beauty in the day-to-day activities of ordinary Americans. Her meticulous draftsmanship revealed an acute sensitivity to body language and facial expression that gave character to her subjects.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Honoré Sharrer, West Point, NY, 1920 – Washington, DC, 2009 Tribute to the American Working People, 1951 Oil on composition board, 38 ¾” x 77 ¼” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.97 Honoré Sharrer borrowed the polyptych format of medieval Italian religious paintings for Tribute to the American Working People. In thirteenth-and-fourteenth-century altarpieces, central panels featured saints and smaller, flanking panels might depict events in their lives. Here the “saint” is a worker, presented not as a burly laborer, but as an ordinary man whose equally ordinary co-workers look on from the windows of their factory. The side panels—showing a county fair, a schoolroom, a barnyard scene, and the parlor of a modest home—are amusing interpretations of small town American life. The people in them—a woman wearing hair curlers, a man dancing a jig, a boy standing on his head—reflect Sharrer’s hope “to express a sense of humanity.” The humor of the painting, though, is tempered by the inclusion of a black child and her white best friend standing with arms entwined. With this simple vignette, Sharrer acknowledged the recently filed lawsuit that would ultimately result in the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

Raphael Soyer, Borisoglebsk Russia, 1899 – New York City, 1987 Annunciation, 1980 Oil on linen, 56 1/8” x 50 1/8” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.98 Raphael Soyer once said that “if art is to survive it must describe and express people, their lives and times. It must communicate.” Soyer painted scenes of life on New York’s Lower East Side and around Union Square. His portrayals of the immigrants, working people, and the unemployed during the Depression reveal his profound sympathy for the situational and emotional circumstances of their lives. With an unerring eye for intimacy and mood, Soyer’s portraits—of friends, himself, studio models—probe the psychology of the inner individual. Annunciation is a quiet painting of two young women caught in a moment of quiet interaction. The biblical title refers to the moment when an angel tells the Virgin Mary that she will bear the Messiah; it speaks to birth, death, and the meaning of life, prompting questions about the nature of the conversation that engages the two women.

George Tooker, New York City, 1920 – Hartland, VT, 2011 In the Summerhouse, 1958 Egg tempera on fiberboard, 24” x 24” Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation 1986.6.100 Like his friend Paul Cadmus, Tooker painted in the ancient medium of egg tempera. His compositional sources lay in the Italian Renaissance, but his thematic impulses came from the existential ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Many of his paintings are like silent theaters of absurdity in which human isolation, self-alienation, and spiritually void rituals play out. In the Summerhouse offers an antidote to contemporary dislocation. It shows two young women surrounded by a lattice framework. The Japanese lanterns they hold cast a warm light on their arms and faces. The nocturnal scene is gentle, the serene enclosure a refuge from the darkness of the night.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

MODERN AMERICAN REALISM

CATALOGUE 1.

Will Barnet, born Beverly, MA, 1911-died New York City, 2012, Sleeping Child

21. Yasuo Kuniyoshi, born Okayama, Japan, 1889-died New York City, 1953, Strong Woman and Child

Robert Birmelin, born Newark, NJ, 1933, Dalles Dam, Evening

22. Yasuo Kuniyoshi, born Okayama, Japan, 1889-died New York City, 1953, Fakirs

Isabel Bishop, born Cincinnati, OH, 1902-died New York City, 1988, Students, Entrance to Union Square

23. Gaston Lachaise, born Paris, France, 1882-died New York City, 1935, Head of a Woman

Isabel Bishop, born Cincinnati, OH, 1902-died New York City, 1988, Artist’s Table

24. Jacob Lawrence, born Atlantic City, NJ, 1917-died Seattle, WA, 2000, Dreams No. 2

Isabel Bishop, born Cincinnati, OH, 1902-died New York City, 1988, Mending

25. Jack Levine, born Boston, MA, 1915-died New York City, 2010, Inauguration

Charles Burchfield, born Ashtabula Harbor, OH, 1893-died West Seneca, NY, 1967, Night of the Equinox

26. Reginald Marsh, born Paris, France, 1898-died Dorset, VT, 1954, George Tilyou’s Steeplechase

Paul Cadmus, born New York City, 1904-died Weston, CT, 1999, Green Still Life

27. Richard Mayhew, born Amityville, NY, 1934, Nature Solitude II

Paul Cadmus, born New York City, 1904-died Weston, CT, 1999, Night in Bologna

28. Kenneth Hayes Miller, born Oneida, NY, 1876-died New York City, 1952, Bargain Hunters

Stuart Davis, born Philadelphia, PA, 1892-died New York City, 1964, Memo

29. Louise Nevelson, born Kiev, Russia (now Kiev, Ukraine), 1899-died New York, 1988, Sky Totem

10. Arthur Dove, born Canandaigua, NY, 1880-died Huntington, NY, 1946, Car across the Street

30. Guy Pene du Bois, born Brooklyn, NY, 1884-died Boston, MA, 1958, Shovel Hats

11. Arthur Dove, born Canandaigua, NY, 1880-died Huntington, NY, 1946, Oil Tanker II

31. Bernard Perlin, born Richmond, VA, 1918-died Ridgefield, CT, 2014, The Farewell

12. Arthur Dove, born Canandaigua, NY, 1880-died Huntington, NY, 1946, Untitled (Landscape)

32. Hugo Robus, born Cleveland, OH, 1885-died New York City, 1964, One and Another

13. Arthur Dove, born Canandaigua, NY, 1880-died Huntington, NY, 1946, Untitled (Centerport)

33. Theodore Roszak, born Poznań, Prussia (now Poznań, Poland), 1907-died New York, 1981, The Great Moth

14. Philip Evergood, born New York City, 1901-died Bridgewater, CT, 1973, Dowager in a Wheelchair

34. Katherine Schmidt, born Xenia, OH, 1898-died Sarasota, FL, 1978, Man with Coffee Cup

15. Sondra Freckelton, born Dearborn, MI, 1936, Harvest

35. Honore Sharrer, born West Point, NY, 1920-died Washington, DC, 2009, Tribute to the American Working People

16. Rose Mary Gonnella-Butler, born Jersey City, NJ, 1957, Purple Interior with Window 17. Rose Mary Gonnella-Butler, born Jersey City, NJ, 1957, Violet Interior with Lamp 18. Nancy Grossman, born New York City, 1940, Cob I 19. Edward Hopper, born Nyack, NY 1882-died New York City, 1967, Cape Cod Morning

36. Raphael Soyer, born Borisoglebsk, Russia, 1899-died New York City, 1987, Annunciation 37. George Tooker, born New York City, 1920-died Hartland, VT, 2011, In the Summerhouse 38. Robert Vickrey, born New York City, 1926-died Naples, FL, 2011, Fear

20. Wolf Kahn, born Stuttgart, Germany, 1927, High Summer

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

2019 EXHIBITION SUPPORT Benefactors Susan L. Blount and Richard A. Bard Amanda Cross Bonnie and Peter McCausland The Sara Roby Foundation Theodore Cross Family Charitable Foundation

Patrons Ritchie, Westray, and Katie Battle Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth

Subscribers First Republic Bank Annabelle and Gregory Fowlkes Karp Family Foundation Jason Tilroe

Supporters Nancy and Doug Abbey Patricia and Thomas Anathan Mariann Berg (Hundahl) Appley Mary Randolph Ballinger Maureen and Edward Bousa Elizabeth S. Jacobsen Art and Diane Kelly Kathryn L. Ketelsen Martha Dippell and Daniel Korengold Margaret Hallowell and Stephen Langer

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SPRING 2019

Sharon and Frank Lorenzo Diane and Britt Newhouse Anne and Edwin Obrecht Maria and George Roach Bonnie J. Sacerdote Janet and Rick Sherlund Mary and Don Shockey Liz and Geoff Verney Kim and Finn Wentworth Stephanie and Jay Wilson

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION Curated by Anne Classen Knutson, Ph.D. The objects gathered in this exhibition tell new stories about Nantucket Island and its place in American art. Long separated family portraits from the 1840s have been reunited. A little-known genre painting by a major artist hangs beside a portrait of the friend and model who inspired it. Landscapes by artists who congregated in Siasconset in the 1880s have been discovered and put on display. The achievements of the many remarkable women who painted in Nantucket are reexamined and newly celebrated. And paintings from the art colony formed in the 1920s are reassembled here, illuminating the influence of talented teachers on their students. Many of these works portray Nantucket with nostalgia, as an escape from the complexities of the modern world. We invite you to take a closer look and to discover surprising connections among these works, sometimes spanning centuries. We hope this will be the first of many projects to discover art and reveal stories about American artists on Nantucket.

William Trost Richards (1833 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1905) Nantucket Shore, 1865 Oil on panel Nantucket Historical Association Gift of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association The Friends of the NHA generously bought this painting for the museum in May 2019. 2019.8.1

Born in Philadelphia, William Trost Richards was recognized initially for his New England landscapes, but beginning with a trip to Nantucket in 1865 turned his attention increasingly to the sea. Richards was associated with both the Hudson River School and the American Pre-Raphaelites, whose works were characterized by almost scientific attention to the details of nature. In Nantucket Shore, for example, the precise delineation of each stalk of beach grass attests to Richardsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s powers of observation. One of about six paintings Richards completed on Nantucket, this rare and beautiful piece shows him in the process of developing the style of marine painting that would later make him famous.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

NEEDLEWORK During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, penmanship, needlework, and drawing were considered appropriate accomplishments for young girls and women, a visible means of displaying their genteel education. Women were encouraged to dabble in art, but not to make it a profession. The two needlework pieces on view here were stitched by twelve-year-old girls: Susan Colesworthy, in Boston, who studied at an elite, female academy; and Sally Stubbs, who enrolled in a local private school on Nantucket. It is likely that Colesworthy borrowed the style of the house and other motifs in her embroidery from prints of European paintings, while the distinctive house in the Nantucket sampler is specific to the island—probably the house that still stands at 5 Orange Street, where the artist Anne Ramsdell Congdon would reside nearly two centuries later.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? What else in Susan Colesworthy’s piece suggests that she had more sophisticated training in needlework than Sally Stubbs?

Susan Colesworthy (1752 – 1811) Needlework picture of a Boston fishing lady, ca. 1765 Silk, wool, linen Nantucket Historical Association Bequest of Susan E. Brock 1937.33.1 Susan Colesworthy was born in Boston to Gilbert and Mary Waldo Colesworthy. In eighteenth-century imagery, the motif of a lady fishing was a metaphor for courtship—a topic of keen interest to an adolescent girl. Colesworthy’s fishing lady likely suggests the fleeting moment when the woman has the upper hand; her suitor has proposed, but the decision is hers. Her competence appears in the full basket of fish by her side, which she has apparently caught without the assistance of a man (and perhaps suggesting that there are plenty of other fish in the sea). This is among the most important pieces of pictorial needlework surviving from pre-Revolutionary America; there are only around eighteen still in existence.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Sally Stubbs (1787 – 1832) Nantucket Sampler, 1799 Silk on linen Nantucket Historical Association Gift of Mrs. Alan I. Newhouse 1987.65.1 The daughter of Samuel and Christina (Worth) Stubbs, Sally Stubbs was born on Nantucket and died unmarried in 1832. She probably made this cross-stitch sampler while still a student at the Nantucket Friends School. An example of a “fancy sampler,” it would have been made for display in a prominent position in the home. The depictions of the house, gardens, and figures are unusual, possibly inspired by a specific Nantucket property, and distinguish Stubbs’s from most other samplers. The upper band of “fat” little trees is characteristic of Nantucket samplers and not found elsewhere.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

FAMILY MATTERS William Swain and James Hathaway were the two most important portrait painters of the island’s golden age of whaling. The older, more accomplished Swain earned the most prestigious commissions, executing more likenesses of local residents than any other painter of the nineteenth century. Hathaway developed his Nantucket career by taking jobs that Swain turned down— primarily portraits of children. This display reunites three-and-a-half-year-old Levi Starbuck Coffin and his one-year-old sister, Eunice, with their father and grandfather. Henry Coffin, in another portrait by Hathaway, hangs on one side of his children’s portrait, with Swain’s portrait of Levi Starbuck, the children’s maternal grandfather, on the other. Levi and Eunice were the fifth and sixth children of Henry and Eliza Coffin, who built the house that still stands at 75 Main Street. The wide-open, almond-shaped eyes and rounded eyebrows shared by father and children are more likely to be features of Hathaway’s style than distinctive family traits.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Can you see any resemblance between grandfather and grandchildren?

William Swain (1803 – 1847) Levi Starbuck, ca.1840 Oil on canvas Private Collection Levi Starbuck (1769–1849), Henry Coffin’s father-in-law, lived around the corner from his grandchildren at 14 Orange Street. A successful sea captain who owned several whaling vessels (including one named after himself), Starbuck would have been in his seventies when this portrait was painted. His conservative black coat and white shirt with cravat is reminiscent of eighteenth-century clothing, suggesting the Quaker virtues of modesty and piety. Swain empathetically portrays the marks of age on Starbuck’s face. His pronounced Adam’s apple, sunken cheeks, and dark pouches under thinning eyes tell the story of a hard but successful life.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

James Hathaway (1832 – 50) Portrait of Children Levi Starbuck Coffin and Eunice Coffin, 1847 Oil on canvas

James Hathaway (1832 – 50) Henry Coffin, ca.1845 Oil on canvas

Nantucket Historical Association Gift of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association

Henry Coffin (1807–1900) and his brother Charles were highly respected members of the Nantucket community and heirs to one of the great whaling fortunes on island. In addition to their successful whale oil and candle business and a fleet of whaleships, they owned a substantial amount of real estate. In 1846, Coffin paid the artist James Hathaway $80 for three portraits— two of the paintings shown here, and a portrait of another of his daughters—and he is said to have helped finance Hathaway’s trip to Italy to study art.

1999.30.1 In an era marked by high infant mortality rates, children often did not live beyond their youth. Portraits of new additions to the family were coveted, therefore, in part because they would serve as visual reminders of loved ones, if they should die young. Happily, the children depicted here, Levi and Eunice Coffin, both enjoyed long lives.

Private Collection

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Eastman Johnson (1824 – 1906) The Peddler, 1873 Oil on canvas Private Collection Born in Lovell, Maine, Eastman Johnson was for many years the foremost genre painter in the United States. He was also among the first American artists of his generation to receive extensive training abroad, and one of the earliest artist-tourists to find Nantucket. In 1871 he bought and renovated property along Cliff Road for a summer home and studio, where he returned with his family every summer for over twenty years. For the next decade, his major genre pictures were inspired by Nantucket settings and people. The Peddler is typical of Johnson’s rustic domestic interiors in which a potbellied stove and a Windsor chair can hint of an earlier time.

Eastman Johnson (1824 – 1906) Painting of Captain Nathan H. Manter, 1873 Oil on board, Nantucket Historical Association Gift of Alexandria and Michael N. Altman with love for Eliza Pickering, Nicholas James, and Jack Asher Altman 2011.16.1 Unlike earlier American genre painters, Johnson created characters who were not country bumpkins, but dignified individuals absorbed in their work; as a result, these paintings particularly appealed to self-made, mid-century collectors. Manter typifies the Nantucketer in this period— the aging sea captain whose bent form and weathered face speak of his adventurous former occupation as well as its demise. The decline of the island’s whaling trade that began in the 1830s was complete by the time Johnson first visited the island. Manter was born on Nantucket in 1818 and went to sea at age seventeen. When he retired from whaling, he worked on the island steamboats.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

AN ARTIST’S RETREAT By the 1870s, artists’ colonies had appeared up and down the northeast coast, from New Jersey to Maine. Associated with summer vacations, these places offered a refuge from the frenzy of urban life and ready access to a richly layered past. To accommodate these artists, the Nantucket steamboat company added boats, lowered fares, and transported around one hundred passengers a day during the summer months. More guesthouses and hotels opened up, and by 1882, as the Inquirer & Mirror reported, Nantucket had become “an artist’s retreat.”

One of the first artist-tourists to arrive on the island was William Trost Richards, in the 1860s. Over the next few decades, other well-known American artists followed, including Abbott Handerson Thayer, Dennis Miller Bunker, Theodore Robinson, and Childe Hassam. In the early 1880s, at the invitation of their mutual friend, the artist Joe Evans, Thayer, Bunker, and Robinson spent the summer painting in Siasconset. George Inness also painted there around the same time, but it is not known whether he met the other artists on island.

George Inness (1825 – 94) Back of Nichols’ Barn, 1883 Oil on board Nantucket Historical Association Gift of the Nantucket Historical Association with additional support from the Max and Heidi Berry Acquisition Fund and the NHA Acquisition Fund 2011.6.1 Born near Newburgh, New York, George Inness was a largely self-taught artist whose style and technique evolved throughout his long career. Like William Trost Richards, Inness established himself initially as a landscape painter in the Hudson River School tradition. Later, he would develop a much looser technique, and by the time he arrived on Nantucket, his style was approaching the Tonalist harmonies of his late work. In the 1860s and 1870s, Inness was constantly battling for recognition from critics and collectors. He did not become financially secure until the 1880s, around the time he was painting on Nantucket, but by 1900, Inness was widely considered America’s greatest artist.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

TONALISM Notice the similar treatment of light, color, and atmosphere in Inness’s Siasconset Beach and Thayer’s Road in Nantucket. In the late 1870s and 1880s, dozens of European-trained artists like Inness and Thayer, along with self-taught artists like Wendell Macy, distanced themselves from the Hudson River School of landscape painting, which tended toward precisely delineated images of nature: see, for example, Nantucket Beach by William Trost Richards. The younger generation of cosmopolitan artists embraced an aesthetic that would later be termed Tonalism, a style notable for poetic, moody, atmospheric interpretations of tranquil scenes, such as autumn sunsets and nocturnal views. James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) is the best-known practitioner of this style, and—with George Inness—undoubtedly contributed to the prevalence and popularity of the Tonalist approach. Designed to evoke an elegiac mood, these often melancholy paintings recall a vanishing agrarian world in a time of rapid industrialization and urban growth. In the period sometimes called the Gilded Age, Tonalist landscapes dominated exhibition halls and filled the homes of upper-middle-class collectors.

George Inness (1825 – 94) Siasconset Beach, 1883 Oil on canvas Nantucket Historical Association Gift of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association 2017.34.2

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Siasconset Beach and Back of Nichols’ Barn, completed in the same year, are among the six known Nantucket works painted by Inness on his four trips to the island between 1879 and 1892. Siasconset Beach exemplifies the new direction Inness took in his later works. Abstract swaths of velvety green, violet, and ocher dissolve into the soft blue of the ocean and the misty translucency of the sky. With blurred movements and soft edges, shadowy figures tend to little fires on the beach.

Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849 – 1921) Nantucket Road, ca. 1881 Oil on canvas Lent by Godel and Co., Inc. Abbott Thayer, born into a distinguished Boston family, was a leader in the New York art world in the 1880s and 1890s. He carried on a lively trade in portraits but established his reputation with idealized images of angels and madonnas. He considered landscapes an enjoyable pastime, however, as well as a lucrative source of income. Thayer and his first wife, Kate Bloede, retreated to Nantucket in the summer of 1881, after losing their second and third children in infancy. Thayer joined Joe Evans, Dennis Miller Bunker, and Theodore Robinson in Siasconset. That summer on Nantucket, Thayer met Emma Beach, who would become his second wife after Kate’s untimely death in 1891.

Dennis Miller Bunker (1861 – 90) The Fisher Girl, Nantucket, 1881 Watercolor on paper Lent by Jan and Warren Adelson Dennis Miller Bunker was born in New York City to a family of Quaker heritage with ties to Nantucket, where the artist spent his childhood summers. Bunker was a key figure in a group of talented young artists—including his good friends John Singer Sargent, Abbott Thayer, Thomas Dewing, and Edmund Tarbell—who introduced the Impressionist aesthetic to American art. Bunker’s work, in particular, reflected the rapidly changing tastes of his time, moving from Barbizon-inspired landscapes to full-blown Impressionist paintings. Tragically, Bunker died of meningitis at age 29, but during a ten-year career, he had earned a distinguished reputation. The Fisher Girl represents one of the last paintings in his early manner; after his summer on Nantucket in 1881, Bunker went to study in Paris, where he adopted the Impressionist style.

Wendell Macy (1845 – 1913) The Old Sam Winslow House, 1894 Oil on canvas Lent by Stephen Langer and Margaret Hallowell Born in New Bedford, Macy was a descendant of some of the first English settlers on Nantucket. He was a prolific, self-taught artist whose island subjects - such as the Old Mill and the lighthouses at Brant Point and Sankaty Head - were especially popular with tourists. A skilled marketer of his Nantucket-themed work, Macy was also absorbing larger trends in American art. The contemplative, melancholy sensibility and delicate diffusion of orange, cream, and blue in the nighttime sky suggest that Macy, like Inness and Thayer, was influenced by Tonalism.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

ELIZABETH REBECCA COFFIN Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850–1930), born in Brooklyn of Nantucket Quaker parentage, was a descendant of the original settlers, Tristram and Dionis Coffin. Educated at Vassar College, the Art Students League in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she was the first American woman to be accepted into the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where Eastman Johnson had also studied. In Philadelphia, Coffin was a pupil of Thomas Eakins (before he was forced to resign because of his unconventional relationships with students), as well as a lifelong friend of the artist and his wife, Susan McDowell Eakins; his striking portrait of Elizabeth Coffin can be found at The Coffin School, here in town. Although Coffin was a remarkably talented artist, her art is not well known beyond Nantucket.

In the 1880s, Lizzie Coffin began to summer regularly on Nantucket, painting portraits and genre scenes that capture the quaint, fading way of life on post-whaling Nantucket. Like Eastman Johnson, her senior by twenty-six years, Coffin portrayed actual people in ordinary domestic settings, rather than idealized models in imaginary places. After moving to Nantucket permanently in 1900, she began to devote her energies to philanthropic endeavors such as reopening The Coffin School to both sexes as a center for manual training and home economics, and her artistic output inevitably declined.

Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850 – 1930) Grandmother’s Garret, ca, 1884 Oil on canvas Nantucket Historical Association Gift of Robert M. Waggaman 1975.23.1 This is the first painting the ambitious Lizzie Coffin exhibited at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York. In fact, she submitted Grandmother’s Garret to several exhibitions indicating that she clearly understood that to achieve success in the art world she needed to promote her own work and participate in the mainstream of the cultural life of New York City. After the Civil War, women like Coffin entered art schools in unprecedented numbers and began to pursue careers. By 1890, commentators and critics claimed that women were winning the “race” for art and outpacing men in their achievement.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850 – 1930) Portrait of the Artist in Conversation with Subject (unfinished) ca, 1890 Oil on canvas Nantucket Historical Association Gift of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association 1998.65.1

This fine self-portrait offers a rare glimpse of the artist in the process of painting. Coffin depicts herself seated in profile, palette and brushes in hand, with a young, blond-haired model posing before her. During the 1880s and 1890s, numerous American artists portrayed their studios, offering a rare glimpse of the artist’s private realm and refined aesthetic tastes. Coffin was an ambitious artist, keenly attuned to the marketplace and to the kinds of paintings that were winning prizes and accolades in New York City, and she took note when James McNeill Whistler, the famous American expatriate artist, exhibited Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1861–62, (illustrated here) in 1881. American artists were so dazzled by the painting that they produced a host of imitations, inspiring contemporary critics to dub the phenomenon “the Whistler rash.” The young model in Coffin’s painting, dressed in harmonious tons of white, suggests that Coffin, too, became swept up in the Whistler frenzy.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

THE ART COLONY In the early twentieth century, women played a significant role in the establishment and growth of an art colony on Nantucket. Francis Lang, the island’s leading art patron, organized her friends to convert abandoned fishing shacks and shanties on the wharfs into affordable studios and art galleries where artists could live, paint, and exhibit their works throughout the summer months. Lang also owned the Island Service Company, which made it possible for the small community of artists to coexist with the traditional waterman culture. Frank Swift Chase, the painter and teacher considered “the dean of Nantucket artists,” arrived in 1920, and a group of his students soon followed. The Nantucket Art Colony was born, transforming the waterfront from working port to haven for the arts. Anne Ramsdell Congdon, Emily Hoffmeier, Elizabeth Saltonstall, Isabelle Hollister Tuttle, and Richard Hayley Lever are a few of the many artists who joined the Art Colony in Nantucket, representing a variety of mid-century styles. Congdon and Tuttle, for example, practiced a Nantucket version of Regionalism, a style adopted by artists across the country in the 1930s. Hoffmeier absorbed Edward Hopper’s urban realism, creating haunting, powerful portraits of the houses, buildings, and streets of Nantucket. Saltonstall developed her own brand of magic realism, a style that blends realism with dreamlike subjects. And Richard Hayley Lever’s work dances between the outmoded styles of post-Impressionism and the more radical methods of modernism.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Annie Barker Folger (1852 – 1936) Lily Street Looking up from Centre Street, ca .1896 Pastel on paper Nantucket Historical Association Gift of Annie Barker Folger 1937.7.6 Best remembered for her lushly rendered pastels of Nantucket scenes, Annie Barker Folger was born on the island. She studied at Vassar College and then at the National Academy of Design. On Nantucket, Folger lived on Lily Street, across from her good friend Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin, a fellow Vassar and Art Students League alumna. Many of Folger’s paintings depict places in and around her neighborhood. Even though Nantucket’s flourishing tourist industry was bringing modern improvements such as railroads, grand hotels, and electricity to the island in the 1880s and 1890s, artists like Folger sought to capture a simpler, more pastoral life on island.

Annie Barker Folger (1852 – 1936) Backyard Clothesline (End of Field House, Centre Street), ca. 1896 Pastel on paper Nantucket Historical Association Gift of Annie Barker Folger 1937.7.8 Annie Barker Folger was so modest about her paintings that she exhibited them reluctantly, only when persuaded by her friends. She did occasionally show her work on island, however, and in 1915 three of her Nantucket landscapes were accepted for exhibition at the prestigious Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where they hung with works by such famous contemporaries as Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Anne Ramsdell Congdon (1873 – 1958) Yerxas Boat Shop, 1936 Oil on masonite Lent by Stephen Langer and Margaret Hallowell

Anne Ramsdell Congdon (1873 – 1958) The Old Mill, 1940 Oil on canvas Nantucket Historical Association Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert D. Congdon 1982.111.1

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Anne Ramsdell Congdon (1873 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1958) Nantucket Cart Path, 1939 Oil on canvas Lent by Stephen Langer and Margaret Hallowell

Anne Ramsdell Congdon, one of the best-known artists to emerge from the Nantucket Art Colony, is highly sought-after by collectors today. Congdon studied art in France and in the United States, then gave up painting while she raised her family. Twenty years later, in 1926, she picked up her brushes again under the guidance of Frank Swift Chase. In 1930, the Congdons moved permanently to Nantucket, where they lived at 5 Orange Street (the house depicted in Sally Stubbsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needlepoint sampler in this exhibition). Civic minded, Congdon was an active member of the NHA and one of the founders of the Hospital Thrift Shop.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Anne Ramsdell Congdon (1873 – 1958) Ruth Haviland Sutton Strolling on the Hill, 1942 Oil on masonite Lent by Harvey Jones An inspired printmaker, pastel portraitist, and oil painter, Ruth Haviland Sutton (1898–1960) was a dear friend of Anne Congdon’s. She was, in fact, a friend of many of the women artists on Nantucket and played a crucial role in the growth of the Art Colony. Sutton was, for example, an avid supporter of the annual Summer Sidewalk Art Show, established in 1929 and held for three days every August. Those exhibitions were an important source of revenue and provided a vital exhibition opportunity for members of the Art Colony.

Elizabeth Saltonstall (1900 – 1990) From the Sea Lithograph Lent by the Saltonstall Family

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Elizabeth Saltonstall (1900 – 1990) Great Expectations Lithograph Lent by the Saltonstall Family Elizabeth Saltonstall, born in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, to a distinguished New England family, studied fine and graphic arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and became a nationally recognized master of lithography. She was also an accomplished painter in oils, watercolors, and eventually acrylics.

Elizabeth Saltonstall (1900 – 1990) Drying Nets, 1925-30 Oil on canvas Lent by the Saltonstall Family Saltonstall came to Nantucket in 1922 to study with Frank Swift Chase, becoming one of the earliest and longest serving members of the Art Colony. Saltonstall’s oil paintings often feature the waterfront as seen from the front deck of her cottage at the base of Commercial Wharf. The nets in Drying Nets seem to take on a life of their own, dancing and whirling around the white boat in the foreground. The way Saltonstall breathes life into inanimate objects makes her work a good example of magic realism, a style of painting popular in the United States and Europe between 1920 and 1950.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Emily Hoffmeier (1888 – 1952) The Whaling Museum, 1938 Oil on canvas board Nantucket Historical Association 1987.170.1 Born in Middleton, Maryland, Hoffmeier graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1909. From 1917 until she retired in 1951, Hoffmeier taught mathematics at West Chester High School in Pennsylvania, where she eventually became head of the department. From 1929, she spent every summer on Nantucket, studying art with Frank Swift Chase. Hoffmeier’s best work is lush and lean. Thick, brightly colored brushstrokes that show Chase’s influence draw your eye in, while long shadows, vacant streets, and melancholy buildings keep you at a distance. Like Edward Hopper’s best paintings, Hoffmeier’s art pulls you in and then pushes you back, leaving you with a sense of mystery and of puzzles unsolved.

Emily Hoffmeier (1888 – 1952) Quince Street, ca. 1935 Oil on canvas Private Collection Emily Hoffmeier painted this portrait of a place for the current owner’s grandmother, who was crippled by arthritis and unable to leave her home. In this painting, Hoffmeier memorializes the woman’s view from her front porch at 16 Quince Street, looking down toward town.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Richard Hayley Lever (1875 – 1958) Summer Street, 1936 Oil on board Nantucket Historical Association Gift of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association 1996.5.1 Considered a pioneering non-conformist, Lever’s aesthetic style is hard to define because it changed many times. In later life, his painting was heavily influenced by the expressionist approach of Vincent Van Gogh, as you can see by comparing the brushstrokes in Old North Wharf, painted in 1913, to those in this painting, from the 1930s. Van Gogh’s influence is most evident where the paint looks slapped on and vigorously dragged around the canvas to suggest the way the wind can buzz through Nantucket. Summer Street depicts the narrow lane that runs parallel to Main Street, between Pleasant and Pine streets, and is dominated by the island’s First Baptist Church.

Richard Hayley Lever (1875 – 1958) Old North Wharf, 1913 Oil on Board Lent by Harvey Jones Born in Adelaide, South Australia, Lever studied art in London and Paris and became a seascape painter in the English fishing village and artist colony of St. Ives in Cornwall. Between 1912 and 1940, Lever spent his summers traveling to coastal art colonies in New England, such as Gloucester, Marblehead, Monhegan, and Nantucket. Lever arrived in Nantucket as a well-known artist who had already won critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the prestigious Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize from the National Academy of Design for a painting titled Nantucket (whereabouts unknown). The Depression slowed sales of his work, and his achievements sank into obscurity. It was only well after his death that a new generation of collectors, artists, and museum curators began to recognize his talents once again.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

THE MOORS While depictions of boats in the harbor are common fare on Nantucket, artists were equally fascinated by the island’s moors. Isabelle Tuttle, an early member of the Art Colony, painted for three decades under the influence of her teacher, Frank Swift Chase. A master painter and stalwart of the Nantucket art scene for over thirty years, Chase offered instruction in plein-air painting to an entire generation, leading groups of students out to the island’s moors and onto its beaches to set up their easels and paint outdoors. His influence can be seen in Tuttle’s thick, bold brushstrokes and in the heavily textured application of paint called impasto. After Chases’s death, Tuttle’s style continued to evolve under the direction of a new teacher on the island, Philip Burham Hicken, with whom she studied acrylic painting into the 1970s. She even took up the palette knife as her style shifted in the direction of abstraction.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? These artists looked at the moors and saw a tapestry of colors. While their paintings are all visual feasts for the eye, some excite, and some calm; some call upon your sense of touch; some are loud, others are silent. Which works create each of these effects?

Isabelle Hollister Tuttle (1895 – 1978) Tuckernuck Moor, ca.1940 Oil on canvas board Nantucket Historical Association Gift of Sara Ingram 2012.9.2 Isabelle Hollister Tuttle and her husband, Henry Emerson Tuttle, were early active members of the Art Colony and later became important voices in the formation of the Artists Association of Nantucket. Isabelle Tuttle first learned of Nantucket from her great aunt, who had been sent here to recuperate after serving as a nurse in the Civil War. In 1926, Tuttle moved to Nantucket with her husband, they purchased a home on North Liberty Street, and she began her studies with Frank Swift Chase.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Isabelle Hollister Tuttle (1895 – 1978) Open Moors (Joseph’s Coat), ca 1940s Oil on canvas Lent by Barbara Beinecke Spitler

Frank Swift Chase (1886 – 1958) The Moors-Nantucket, ca.1930s Oil on canvas board 12 x 16”, 20 x 24” framed Purchased through the Friends of the Artists Association of Nantucket from the Collection of Barbara Beinecke Spitler

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Phillip Hicken (1910 – 85) Moor: Evening, ca. 1965 Acrylic on canvas Gift to the Artists Association of Nantucket’s Permanent Collection by G.T. Burke Philip Burnham Hicken was a Massachusetts painter, printmaker, and educator who spent much of his life in Boston and Nantucket. In the 1930s he worked on projects for the WPA, and during World War II he spearheaded the development of the modern silkscreen technique to quickly generate and disseminate maps and other images for military intelligence. Hicken arrived on island in 1955, and from the 1960s through the mid-1980s was an integral part of Nantucket’s art scene, mentoring and influencing a great number of well-known Nantucket artists. His own works were exhibited nationwide and are now in the collections of numerous universities and museums.

Andrew Shunney (1916 – 1978) Madaket Oil on board Lent by Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth Born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, Shunney studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. He afterward moved to New York City, and like many of the artists represented in this exhibition, attended classes at the Art Students League. He worked for several years with the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, and then studied in Paris, where he became a permanent member of the prestigious Salon d’Automne. On Nantucket he exhibited with Elizabeth Saltonstall, and under the influence of Philip Hicken he developed the technique of applying thick impasto with a palette knife.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

Henry Stephens Eddy (1875 – 1944) The Pink Boat, 1924 Oil on canvas Lent by the Hallowell Family

C. Robert Perrin (1915 – 1999) Help Save Our Nantucket from Overdevelopment Now, 1984 Watercolor Lent by Harvey Jones Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Robert Perrin worked as a commercial artist in Boston before serving in World War II. While in the army, his comic strips were published in military newspapers. During the summer of 1945, Perrin discovered the beauty of Nantucket, and by 1946 had moved to the island to begin a career as a watercolorist. Many of his watercolors were painted as book illustrations, and he became especially well known for his whimsical interpretations of whales, sailors, and ghosts. Help Save Our Nantucket is considered one of his best watercolors. Preoccupied with the development of Nantucket and fascinated by the Whaling Museum, Perrin came to associate killing whales with destroying Nantucket. If you look at this watercolor closely, you will see boats representing the doomed Nantucket whaleship Essex, which inspired the conclusion of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The ghosts floating in the whale’s flukes (or tail) represent the captain and crew of the Essex and their families.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

THE ART OF SEWARD JOHNSON The Artists Association of Nantucket and the Nantucket Historical Association welcomed a selection of Seward Johnson’s sculptures in April that will be on display through Columbus Day. Nantucketers and visitors have been enjoying the artwork of Johnson, whose lifelike bronze sculptures have been exhibited internationally for decades. Seward Johnson is frequently noted in the media as “America’s most popular sculptor.” This past April, Johnson was honored as recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in sculpture by the International Sculpture Center at a gala in New York City. Sculptures are on display at the NHA’s Hadwen House garden as well as around the Whaling Museum and at the AAN’s Cecelia Joyce and Seward Johnson Gallery. All locations are in the Nantucket Cultural District. The life-sized sculptures have been turning heads all summer long and have made for great “photo ops” at all locations. Share your photos with us on social media #ACKSewardJohnson and tag @ackhistory and @ackartists

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

STRANGERS TO NEIGHBORS Jewish Life on Nantucket By Lisa Lazarus, Exhibit Writer

magine what it would feel like if you were to pack up your belongings and those of your immediate family and get on a large ship to sail for many months across an ocean you had never traveled on before. But, wait—don’t get too excited. This is not a vacation. It is, in fact, an ageless story of emigration. So, imagine instead, saying good-bye to your parents, your sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins and friends—knowing you would, in all likelihood, never see them again. Imagine long weeks at sea, the terror and apprehension you might be feeling, the doubts, the seasickness, the cold, and the hunger. Then, imagine reaching another land quite different from the one you were born, with different languages and customs to learn and places to navigate. You might even be unsure of where you are going to reside, or with whom.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

If you were a Sephardic Jew leaving Spain and Portugal in the 1700s, you might choose to settle in Newport, Rhode Island, an established Jewish community, both then and now. There, perhaps, you would feel at home with those that embraced the same religious customs and beliefs as you. But coming from a different background made settling on Nantucket far more difficult. Today, the island welcomes people from other countries around the world with varying cultural backgrounds and religions, and is proud of its open arms and welcoming spirit. But it was not always that way. For several centuries Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews struggled to maintain a foothold here on the island and were quite often treated as outcasts. It was not until the late 1800s, in fact, that a few Jewish families from other towns and countries were welcomed and able to establish businesses and homes on the island; it was several

decades before Jewish families would be considered neighbors, not strangers, on our tiny island 30 miles at sea. Fortunately, the tide has changed over the years— no doubt in exact correspondence to a change in times and the tenacity of the Jewish people who have worked hard to establish a large year-round Jewish community on the island. This summer, the Nantucket Historical Association, in partnership with the Jewish Congregation Shirat HaYam, proudly presents the exhibition Strangers to Neighbors: Jewish Life on Nantucket, providing a glimpse at the history of Jewish life on Nantucket from past to present. This story, in part, starts in the mid 1700s with two Sephardic Jews, Joseph Rodriguez Rivera from Spain and Aaron Lopez from Portugal, his nephew and later sonin-law, who never lived on Nantucket but did conduct business with those on the island, including William and Joseph Rotch. It was Rivera, in fact, who was credited with bringing the method of manufacturing spermaceti whale-oil candles to New England, therefore, tying him to Nantucket’s history, irrevocably. However, it was more than 100 years later before a handful of Jewish families arrived on the island, buying homes and buildings in which to house their businesses, thus paving the way for generations to come. If you have been visiting Nantucket, or have lived on the island for many years, you might remember Cy Kaufman and his wife, Rose, who opened Cy’s Green Coffee Pot on South Water Street in the early 1930s. Though the business was sold in the early 1960s and has since changed hands through the years, remnants from Cy and Rose Kaufman’s establishment can still be found inside the building today. Emile Genesky, who also came to Nantucket in those early days, was the first owner of The Toggery Shop on Main Street before he sold it to Philip Murray in 1945. Bernie and Grace Grossman, Bernie served on the Steamship Authority Board of Governors for many years and Grace was instrumental in the rearing the Museum Shop for the Nantucket Historical Association, still hold a warm place in the hearts of many islanders, as does Morgan Levine, the first president of the Jewish Congregation and a man who cared about island aesthetics. In his efforts to keep the historical feel of the island intact, he endeavored to make changes around town by encouraging the addition of historical signage, benches, wooden trash barrels, and old-fashioned lamp-

lights. Additionally, you may also remember him as the owner of three stores in town: the Nobby Shop, Four Winds Gifts, and the Four Winds Craft Guild. Currently housed in the historic Rotch building at the bottom of Main Street, the Craft Guild was and is still known for its Nantucket Lightship baskets. Though these people are no longer with us, they are but a few of the Jewish men and women who have, over the years, become an integral part of the island’s yearround community and, in so doing, have made large positive contributions in the areas of government, commerce, business, and the arts. Today, their Jewish ties and traditions continue as more and more Jewish families settle on the island or come for extended visits in the summer months. Carrying on the values of their predecessors by working hard to establish themselves here on the island, they, too, have contributed greatly to its growth and success. In 1983, a Jewish Congregation, Shirat HaYam, was established on Nantucket as another way for Jewish families to feel connected and at home in this community. The Congregation welcomes all who wish to attend the Sabbath and/or High Holidays and, as the Congregation continues to grow, wishes to extend knowledge and understanding of Jewish traditions and customs to all. The story of people from other backgrounds, religions, and cultures trying to find their way in a new place is not new, but in working toward a better understanding of all this might entail, we can strive to be more sensitive, caring, and accepting as members of our community, but also as a part of the broader spectrum of our nation as a whole. In so doing, we can learn from each other and come together to celebrate not only our differences but all that we share as neighbors in this one world of ours.

Strangers to Neighbors: Jewish Life on Nantucket is a special exhibition presented jointly by Congregation Shirat HaYam and the Nantucket Historical Association. It is on display at the NHA Research Library’s Whitney Gallery, 7 Fair Street, June 20 to October 14, 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. daily.

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

EXHIBITIONS AT HADWEN HOUSE

he grandest home in Nantucket Town is the Hadwen House at 96 Main St. This summer the Nantucket Historical Association has opened the house to the public as exhibit spaces filled with the material history of the island—sometimes sumptuous, occasionally thread-bare, always fascinating. The imposing first floor of the house contains a library of objects from our collection, written in mahogany, porcelain, linen, and silver. Rich in many ways, the collection is richest in story and history. The rooms trace the lineage of objects brought to the island, made on the island, bought, sold, and collected on the island. And the stories and the characters are legion.

The house itself is exhibit number one. Built by silversmith and spermaceti magnate William Hadwen for his bride Eunice, it’s a symbol of the first American energy empire. Wealthy, philanthropic, and active as abolitionists, integrationists, and fighters for women’s right to vote, the Hadwens were an extraordinary couple. But the house is also a harbinger of decline. Built in 1846, it was thirty years out of style, recalling a time when Nantucket was at its peak. And it was nearly the last great house built on the island; notwithstanding Hadwen’s success, most of the whaling industry was already in New Bedford, and building at that scale wouldn’t be seen again for more than a century.

DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER On the first floor of this magnificent home the NHA has created four galleries to share the wealth of our collection.

Fine Furniture and Clocks Furniture on Nantucket was usually imported from elsewhere. Local craftsmen adapted the work of other Massachusetts and Philadelphia makers, often in the restrained Quaker style. Here we’ve created a “chair library,” a dozen examples spanning more than two centuries; a row of gorgeous tall clocks, one by master clockmaker Simon Willard and another by Nantucket instrument-maker and inventor Walter Folger, Jr.; two contrasting desks, an elegant “cylinder desk” by Nantucketer Heman Ellis paired with a rough, country desk from the Tuckernuck Island School; a table of wonderful, folky marquetry; and a collection of child’s furniture, doll furniture, and miniatures.

China, Pottery, and Porcelain Ceramics tell a different story. During the Revolution the island’s whaling industry, mostly non-violent Quakers surrounded by floating armies, was at risk. Merchant William Rotch, with others, established satellite whaling

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

towns in safer ports. He sent Uriah Swain to Dunkirk, where Swain apparently developed an eye for beautiful things. After the war Swain captained the whaleship Mars to China, trading for exquisite ceramics, paintings, and tea. Within two years he had built the clipper Midnight for the China Trade and commissioned his son-in-law James Cary, who shared his tastes, to trade with the Chinese. Cary secured Chinese silver, porcelain, and paintings, the best the island has ever seen. Those ceramics are on display in the Hadwen House, along with a range

of English mochaware, sponge-ware, and transfer-decorated Staffordshire pottery; a wall of “sets” of plates and cups, comparing Chinese and European motifs; funky Nantucket souvenir pieces; and a wonderful, diminutive collection of whimsical pepper pots.

Clothing and Quilts NHA textile holdings are large but difficult to display without jeopardizing the objects. With new climate control and lighting, you are invited into “visible storage” to experience examples of dress from the plainest Quaker frock to the most elaborate wedding train; a selection of quilts; a range of men’s tailoring, including vests, coats, and shirts; a remarkably delicate pair of dimity drawers;

and a tablecloth bearing inscribed and embroidered-over autographs of decades of houseguests at a ’Sconset home.

Fine Silver Fine silver traces a lineage of silversmiths on the island through hallmarks on some forty fiddle-pattern spoons—a family tree of businesses beginning in the eighteenth century with John Jackson, the first island goldsmith, and William Hadwen; Revolution-era pieces by Benjamin Bunker, the predominant Nantucket silversmith; a selection of souvenir spoons; and designs by Reva and Mort Schlesinger, on-island silversmiths during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

NANTUCKET STORIES The upstairs of the Hadwen House is devoted to Nantucket stories.

From Slavery to Suffrage: Two Centuries in the Political Education of Nantucket From Slavery to Suffrage: Two Centuries in the Political Education of Nantucket traces the island’s historic efforts against slavery and for women’s right to vote, highlighting the people and events that marked the struggles. You meet William Gayer, who freed his “servant” Africa and in his 1710 will made him a man of property. Likewise, Eunice Ross, an extraordinary student at the African School, who insisted over six years that she be allowed to attend Nantucket’s public high school, eventually securing her place at the age of 24 and integrating the schools in the process. And Lucretia Coffin Mott, born on the island, who began her political life as an abolitionist before becoming one of the key campaigners for votes for women, winning passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in 1920.

Melville at 200: Moby-Dick Lives! Also on the second floor is Melville at 200: Moby-Dick Lives! by Melville scholars Jamie Jones and Marina Wells. In this, the bicentenary of his birth, the exhibit traces Melville’s lifelong interest with Nantucket and the wreck

of the Nantucket whaleship Essex, destroyed by a sperm whale. It traces his visit to Nantucket, his depiction of the multi-racial character of life on a whaleship, and ends with a survey of current-day pop culture homages to Moby-Dick, including graphic novels, pop-up books, and livres d’artistes, as well as a six-foot whaleboat and other models built to provide special effects for the 1956 film Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck.

An Architectural History of Nantucket Michael May of the Nantucket Preservation Trust has created a survey of the architecture of Nantucket from the earliest days of European occupation through the end of the nine-teenth century. May tells the story of the development and flourishing of Nantucket vernacular architectural styles, from the lean-to house through the typical Nantucket house, to the Classical Revival and finally the resort palaces of the late nineteenth century. Throughout the new exhibits at Hadwen House, we hope to engage visitors through many channels: visual, auditory, text, and digital interactive display, and bring to life again the stories and the people of long-ago Nantucket through the objects they left behind. Please come see; we know you will love the stories as much as we do!

nha.org / NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

LATE SUMMER CALENDAR EVENTS

EXHIBITIONS

LECTURES & PROGRAMS

AUGUST August 1 – 31 Hands-on History

1 PM - 4 PM Daily Whaling Museum Daily children’s craft activity in the Discovery Center.

2 PM Greater Light An afternoon theatrical series featuring Beverly Hall as Hanna Monaghan.

Nantucket by Design August 1 Design Luncheon • 11 AM

White Elephant Village Ballroom Featuring a keynote presentation by Bunny Williams, one of the most talented names in design.

The Nantucket Summer Antiques Show Preview Party • 6 PM Nantucket Boys & Girls Club Opening night featuring more than 30 fine antiques dealers. All proceeds from the preview party benefit the NHA.

August 2 Design Panel • 2 PM White Heron Theatre

Featuring panelists Anthony Baratta, Cathy Kincaid, and Stewart Manger. Moderated by Steele Marcoux, editor-in-chief of Veranda magazine.

All-Star Private Dinners • 7 PM Private Homes Intimate candlelit dinners with featured design luminaries.

August 3 Tabletop Workshop • 10 AM White Heron Theatre

Join Wendy Kvalheim, CEO of Mottahedeh, Margot Shaw editor-in-chief of Flower magazine, and Kim Merlin of KKM to learn creative ways to set a stunning table and design a beautiful centerpiece.

There’s No Place Like Home • 11:30 AM White Heron Theatre Learn how the concept of “home” has evolved in a world driven by social media online shopping and digital convenience with Debbie Propst, president of One Kings Lane.

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

6:30 PM Whaling Museum Gala celebration set amid Nantucket’s history. Enjoy amazing food stations and cocktails, and dance the night away under the whale.

August 5, 12, 19 & 26 Summer Sunset Series

7 PM Whaling Museum Live music on the rooftop.

August 5 Nantucket Basket Bracelet with Martha Polachi

August 1, 8 & 15 Hanna in Her Garden

1800 HOUSE

August 3 Night at the Museum

Summer Fest

Every week through August 31, 11 AM - 3 PM Oldest House: Wednesdays & Fridays | Old Mill: Thursdays & Saturdays Designed for multi-generational engagement, explore Nantucket’s history and culture through participation, play, and fun presentations at two of the island’s iconic structures.

FAMILY ACTIVITIES

9 AM 1800 House Create a hand-oven bracelet in a traditional basket-weaving style.

August 5 Historic Ceramic Transferware with Mary Emery Lacoursiere • 9 AM 1800 House

Use historic images and words on waterslide decals to create one-of-a-kind ceramic pieces.

August 6 & 20 “Out of the Vault” Series

12 PM Research Library Experience a special show-and-tell series of artifacts rarely seen from the vault at the Research Library.

August 6 & 7 Shaker Box Workshop with Eric Pintar

9 AM 1800 House Create a nest of six boxes from cherry wood.

August 6 Under the Whale Lecture Series

5:30 PM Whaling Museum With Bill Lynn of the Herreshoff Marine Museum.

August 6 & 20 Afternoon Tea • 2 PM Hadwen House Garden

Enjoy an afternoon in the beautiful garden of the Hadwen House with tea and light bites. Family Friendly

August 7, 14 & 21 Intermediate Deerfield Embroidery with Lucy Dillon • 9 AM 1800 House

A variety of stitches will be employed with discussion and advice so that each student creates a unique piece.

August 7 Under the Whale Lecture Series

5:30 PM Whaling Museum With Dr. Greg Skomal of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

August 8 Block & Shave Plane Tool Workshop with Eric Pintar • 9 AM 1800 House

Create a wooden block or shave plane tool for your projects.

August 12 – 15 Carve & Race a Small Pond Boat ages 10 & up: Collaboration with Maria Mitchell Association with Mark Sutherland

9 AM 1800 House Learn how to build your very own small pond sail boat. Carve, and assemble your boat and then paint it with your favorite colors and designs.

August 26 – 29 Nantucket Floorcloth with Mary Emery Lacoursiere • 9 AM 1800 House

August 28 Translating Azorean Coastal Whaling

August 13 Symposium: Fine Arts

8:30 AM Whaling Museum With Anne Classen Knuston, Ph.D., curator of Two Hundred Years of American Art on Nantucket: Pairings from the NHA and Private Collections in the new Williams Forsyth Gallery.

August 14 Symposium: Melville on Nantucket

8:30 AM Quaker Meeting House In celebration of Melville’s 200th birthday, join us for a morning of lectures with speakers Nathaniel Philbrick, Dr. Jamie Jones, and Dr. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards. 3 PM Whaling Museum A program featuring performances highlighting historic Nantucket women through excerpts from personal narratives, letters, and memoirs.

August 16 Wampanoag Life in 1659 • 11 AM Oldest House

Learn about early Wampanoag life at the Oldest House with Plimoth Plantation educators.

August 19 – 22 Sailors Valentine with Suzanne Marie Dietsch • 9 AM 1800 House

Learn the skills needed to create an eight-sided star with floral center.

August 20 – 22 Blues & Hues: Indigo Workshop with Sayzie Carr • 9 AM 1800 House

In this three day workshop, work with indigo dye on fabric using a variety of techniques to create patterns.

September 3 and 17 Afternoon Tea

Behind-the-scenes tour of the Hadwen House with guest curator Dan Elias.

August 21 – 23 Moby-Dick Rehearsed

7 PM Whaling Museum One-act play presented with the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket.

August 26 & 27 Scrimshaw Pendant Necklace with David Lazarus • 9 AM 1800 House

2 PM Hadwen House Garden Enjoy an afternoon in the beautiful garden of Hadwen House with tea and light bites.

September 8 - 10 Symposium: Needlework

Celebrate the tradition of needlework on Nantucket with leaders in the needle art field from Nantucket and the Winterthur Museum. The symposium will include tutorials, discussions, and hands-on workshops.

September 3 - 6 Nantucket Cardinal with Bill Sarni

9 AM 1800 House Carve a male Northern Cardinal and study the bird structure, detail, and colors.

September 5 - 6 Cottage Spice Basket with Eric Taylor

9 AM 1800 House Weave a beautiful small basket with cherry handles and rims.

September 9 Cottage Swing-Handled Basket with Eric Taylor • 9 AM 1800 House September 9 - 12 Hand-Carved Striped Bass with Bill Sarni • 9 AM 1800 House

August 21 Member Morning • 8:30 AM Hadwen House

4:30 PM Whaling Museum Discovery Center Translate from English to Portuguese and back to English with Professor Francisco Cota Fagundes from UMass Amherst.

SEPTEMBER

August 15 Extraordinary Nantucket Women

Create your own Nantucket floorcloth design.

Carve a striped bass that is approximately 12 inches long, from native white pine, using all hand tools.

September 11-13 Sailors Valentine with Elizabeth Braun

9 AM 1800 House Learn the skills needed to create these shell collage souvenirs of days gone by.

September 16-19 Chair Caning Clinic with Liz Coffin

9 AM 1800 House Reclaim your favorite chair. Participants will bring their own chairs and learn how to ready them for repair.

For more information, visit: NHA.org or call 508-228-1894 Follow Us @ackhistory

PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT NANTUCKET, MA AND ADDITIONAL ENTRY OFFICES

P.O. BOX 1016, NANTUCKET, MA 02554–1016

NEW MUSEUM SHOP NOW OPEN

We’re We’re proud to We’reproud proudto to support support the Nantucket supportthe theNantucket Nantucket Historical Historical Association. HistoricalAssociation. Association.

NHA Members enjoy 10% off all regularly priced items 100% of all purchases support the NHA

Shop online now at nantucketmuseumshop.org 13 Broad Street Nantucket MA 02554 508-228-1894, ext. 147 Shop@nha.org

Museum Reproductions Books, Souvenirs, Toys and Gifts 4

HISTORIC NANTUCKET / SUMMER 2019

(855) (855) 886-4824 886-4824 (855) (855) 886-4824 886-4824

Member Member FDIC FDIC Member Member FDIC FDIC

Historic Nantucket Summer 2019, Vol. 69, No. 3

Articles inside

A Message