South+Ledges,+Appledore,+The

Date: 1913
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1929/1929.6.62_1a.jpg?itok=SQ4JfjSt width="337" height="321" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/south-ledges-appledore-10086"]] || Title: **The South Ledges, Appledore**

Artist: **Childe Hassam** Born: Dorchester, Massachusetts 1859 Died: East Hampton, New York 1935

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 34 1/4 x 36 1/8 in. (87.0 x 91.6 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly

Accession: 1929.6.62 || Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter's gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore's brief summer. This painting evokes the leisurely, seasonal rhythms of America's privileged families in the last years before the Great War. A beautifully dressed woman shields her face from the sun; she looks down and away, as if absorbed in the song of a sandpiper, the island bird that inspired Celia Thaxter's most famous children's poem.
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// Sandpiper // By Celia Thaxter (1872)

Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I, And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,-- One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,-- One little sandpiper and I.

I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry. He starts not at my fitful song, Nor flash of fluttering drapery. He has no thought of any wrong; He scans me with a fearless eye: Staunch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be tonight, When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky: For are we not God's children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I?


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