This painting, dated 1901, is a view from one of the islands in the group known as the Isles of Shoals, which lie ten miles east of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This remote resort was one of Hassam's favorites from the 1880s until about 1916. On Appledore, the largest island, a 400-guest hotel was opened in 1848 by the Laightons, whose daughter Celia LaightonThaxter, a poet and amateur artist, probably encouraged Hassam's first visit there in 1883. His series of scenes of the coast of Appledore, painted beginning in 1890, are reminiscent of French Impressionist Claude Monet's views of Pourville and Étretat made in the early 1880s. This canvas was the first work by Hassam that the Metropolitan acquired.

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