Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1891-10-29
HAUNTS OF TWO ARTISTS.
One Paints by the Sea, the Other
in the Mountains.
M. F. H. de Haas at Marblehead Neck
A Quaint Old Corner of the Coast
Hamilton Gibson In the Sylvan hooks
of ConnectIcut's Washington.
ICoPYRIGHT, 1871

The studios of Boston, of New York
and of Philadelphia are exhibiting I'M
mistakable signs of life. When the art
schools open, as they do early in Octo-
Der, those artists who are enrolled in
the lists of instructors-and they are
nowadays an Interestingly representa-
tive body-must be on hand in their
city precincts, and the unattached re-
mainder of the artist world struggles in
as they may feel like or may have to
during many weeks following. In
mild season such as this early fall has
been in the east, every artist who is
compelled to return to town swears a
mild, artistic swear word, and com
promises with himself by doing very
little work until the weather gets more
genuinely fallish.
American artists display independence
of personal preferences. There is no
section of the country to which it is the
correct thing to go, No fashion regu-
lates the locality of artistic:excursion as
it does abroad. The American artist,
notwithstanding all that has been said
about his subscrvience to foreign and
especially French ideas is thoroughly
self-respecting when he betakes him
self out of doors, and seems to feel
most particularly snug and contented
when he strikes nook uninVaded by
any other sketching rambler.
have in mind two artists whom all
the country knows, who go pretty much
every season to the same haunts and
have those haunts a good deal to them
selves; that is to say, they have seemed
to make them their own.
NJ. f. H. de Haas, the distinguished
marine painter, generally packs his
traps and is off in July to Marblehead
Neck. The painter usually remains
within sound of the breakers until
about the middle of October, when
things get rather chilly on this section
of the Massachusetts coast, but this
season the illness and death of Mrs. de
Haas brought the seasons work to an
end before September came. The
death of Mrs. de Haas will seem to
every body who has known the artist
and his wife personally like peculiar
ly severe loss.
Marblehead itself is on rocky PENN
sula. 1t was planted by colony
away back in 1886. Little and pinched
as it was it sent full regiment to the
continental army. 1t was here that
Whittier laid the scene of his Skipper
Ireson's Ride" the ride, by the way,
being on a rail. A little over hun
dred years ago the town was only Sec
ond to Boston in population. The en-
barge of 1910 ruined the maritime bust
ness of the place, and at the close of
the war of 1912 British prisons held five
hundred of her sailors.
Marblehead Neck is across the har-
Dor. 1t has distinctive picturesque
ness and is very naturally a haunt for
lovers of coast scenery and quaint
vestige of an eastern civilization. The
old houses are a luxury to the relic
hunting taste. But Mr.. de Haas turns
his eyes shoreward and finds lively
delight in the shaggy lines of coast and
| the brilliant sea colors to be found to
| the eastward on the reefs. This sum-
mer he acquired studio quarters offer
ing peculiar advantages. In cottage
imminent to the water he fitted up a
summer studio, and from the veranda
he was able to command a fine painting
view of the shore scenery. This veran-
da was so close to the sea that the
artist was able to set up his easel there
and carried forward in direct transcript
from nature fine, breezy picture, COW
>ring a canvas five feet wide. Work on