Born in England, William Chadwick (1879-1962) moved with his parents to Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1882. After graduating from high school, he relocated to New York City and enrolled in the Art Student’s League, studying with John H. Twachtman (1853-1902), George Bridgman (1865-1943), and Joseph DeCamp (1858-1923). In 1901, he traveled to Europe, and spent a significant amount of time studying architecture and visiting museums in Rome.

The following year, Chadwick made his first visit to Old Lyme, Connecticut, where he became affiliated with the Impressionist art colony centered at Florence Griswold’s home. For the rest of the artist’s career, he frequently revisited the picturesque town and eventually purchased a home there in 1915. At Old Lyme, Chadwick espoused the tenets of Impressionism originally established and made famous by Childe Hassam (1859-1935), one of the early proponents of the style in the United States.

Chadwick and Hassam both executed a high-keyed range of colors and broken brushstrokes to create joyous, light-filled scenes. Chadwick’s Impressionism, however, is marked for its subtler handling and a particular precision as opposed to Hassam's more vigorous brushwork. Both artists delighted in uncomplicated subjects, such as the scenery found on the Isles of Shoals, which lie ten miles east of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Theislands’ striking subject matter inspired almost ten percent of Hassam’s works, which represent the artist at his height of creativity (metmuseum.org). The same could be said of Chadwick’s Isles of Shoals, which highlights an exceedingly successful pictorial formula with a remarkable quality of light, and brilliant colors interwoven in a tapestry-like pattern on the surface of the rocks. Despite the broad foreground, there’s a great sense of space and depth within the small, rectangular canvas.

Chadwick died in 1962 in Old Lyme. His work is represented by the Lyman Allyn Museum, the Lyme Historical Society, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Provenance: From a private collection to the gallery.

Biography:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Online Collection Database, “Childe Hassam, Surf, Isles of Shoals, 1913” object page, www.metmuseum.org.