Three Days of Painting at the Isles of Shoals (part one)

Photo of Gosport (God's Port) by Jonathan Small, ©2009.

I've just returned home after a brief stay on Star Island in the Isles of Shoals archipelago off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. I went there along with eleven others as a participant in a trip offered by the Worcester Art Museum entitled Art and Literature Adventure - Painting on the Isles of Shoals. The leader of the group was Sue Swinand and I found her enthusiasm for painting, and the arts in general, infectious.

The Isles of Shoals have held a fascination for me on a number of levels. I've always had a thing about visiting far-off places, islands in particular, off the beaten path. Some of the locations I've previously visited include: the Magdalen Islands in the Bay of Saint Laurence, Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy, Monhegan Island and Cliff Island off the coast of Maine, and Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks.

The history of the Isles of Shoals goes deep. The earliest record of the Isles was when John Smith stopped by and put them on the map in 1614 under the name "Smythe Isles".

The Smith Isles can be located on the map just left of the coat of arms.

Historians agree that there were Europeans there previous to Smith, but that they were uninterested in naming and mapping the islands, and more interested in catching cod and drying their catch in seasonal encampments. By the 1630s there were fishermen living there year round. These were batchelor fishermen and we know that because there was actually a law forbidding any women to live on the Isles. My own personal family history goes back to some of the early inhabitants at the Isles of Shoals in the 1600s. In 1653, after wives were finally permitted on the islands, some of the inhabitants petitioned the Massachusetts Colonial Government that they be granted the status of a township. On that petition were the signatures of three of my ancestors: John Bickford, William Sealy, and Edward Smale, forefather of most of the Smalls of New England. I've found three other lines in my ancestry which lead back to the Isles of Shoals with the surnames of King, Turpin, and Endle. Thomas Turpin was a constable for the Isles of Shoals. "Hot-tempered Shoalers tended to resist arrest, like the drunken sailor who called constable Thomas Turpin a 'wich, divell, roage, and divers other opprobious speches, and assalt[ed] him with many blowdy oeath violently.'" From Tales from the Courthouse Offshore Antics: The Case of the Smuttynose Sailor Who Became a Judge by Diane Rapaport.

Celia Thaxter

The other aspect of Isles of Shoals history that fascinates me was during the grand hotel era during the late 19th century when Celia Thaxter would entertain well known writers, painters and musicians in her cottage parlor on Appledore Island. Those who know me know of my research into the life and work of my great-great-grandfather Stephen Alonzo Schoff, the engraver. He and Celia Thaxter shared a number of friends and associates, so much so that I wonder if they knew one and other. Celia and her husband Levi Thaxter both considered the painter William Morris Hunt one of their dearest friends, and Schoff also felt about him in the same way. In one of Schoff's obituaries, Hunt was singled out as someone important in his life. Additionally, Celia and Levi Thaxter lived for a number of years in Newtonville - not very happily in Celia's case, as she preferred her island home, - and Stephen Schoff lived in the same town, less than two miles away. Celia was very close to the publisher James T. Fields and his wife Annie. Her books were published by Ticknor and Fields, as well as its later corporate incarnations. Schoff did a large number of engraved portraits of authors for these same firms; among them were many who were also in Celia Thaxter's circle of friends, including Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Theodore Parker, and John Greenleaf Whittier. The coincedences go on and on.

The Ferry to Appledore, painted by William Morris Hunt ca. 1879, the year he died at the Isles of Shoals, image courtesy of Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York.

Portrait of William Morris Hunt, etched by S.A. Schoff

John Greenleaf Whittier, one of three portraits of the poet etched by Stephen A. Schoff. Celia Thaxter had a very close relationship with Whittier which bordered on the romantic.


With all deference to William Morris Hunt, there was another artist who is the best known of the painters of the Shoals, Childe Hassam.

West Wind by Childe Hassam, image courtesy Yale Collection of American Literature, Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven. This simple composition captures the feel of the Isles.

Cottages on Star Island, by Jonathan Small, © 2009.

I'll show more photos and examples of my art in part two.