New England Shoreline with Stone Wall and Dock

New England Shoreline with Stone Wall and Dock depicts a short dock and protective wall extending into calm water from a spit of land strewn with rocks, with a modest stretch of beach in the foreground defined by low boulders and scattered masts and spars. At the left, a small moored sailboat and dinghy testify to the active use of the deserted dock; other sails appear on the flat horizon. The elements that compose this image are compressed into a narrow horizontal band just below the middle of the paper, but the lights and shadows defining the solid structures of the dock and its immediate surroundings evoke the bright glare of diffused midday light on a calm summer's day, so that the blank upper third of the image can be read as flat, unmodulated sky. The deserted, somewhat lonely scene is rendered with scientific detachment.

Haseltine focused on rocks, particularly shoreline formations, throughout his career as a landscape painter. During the early 1860s, he worked on the New England coast, painting the natural rocky shore almost to the exclusion of human elements, as in the painting Rocks at Nahant (TF 1999.65). New England Shoreline with Stone Wall and Dock is a relatively rare view for Haseltine of a place almost wholly transformed by human use. However, it shares with his drawings of coastal rock formations, such as Coastline, Narragansett, Rhode Island (TF 1999.63), the careful depiction of the central solid forms as they intersect with water, and a contrasting sketchiness in the rendering of the surrounding elements of ocean and sky.

New England Shoreline with Stone Wall and Dock does not appear to be related to any known particular painting by Haseltine. Rather, it is one of many drawings he made in his efforts to capture the massive forms and varied textures of rocks and stone under different light conditions and at various times of day. Not necessarily studies for specific paintings, these drawings aided the development of his powers of observation and memory, according to the contemporary concept of the artist as a revealer of deeper truths through the exact portrayal of the visible world.

William Stanley Haseltine, Davis & Langdale Company, Inc., New York, New York and Ben Ali Haggin, Inc., New York, New York, March 5–April 2, 1983. [exh. cat.]

Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900 (Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]