Summer Sea, Isles of Shoals

Summer Sea, Isles of Shoals, now at Toledo's Museum of Art, belongs to Hassam's sustained series of summer paintings at the Isles of Shoals where he documented the relationship between the rocky island terrain and the Atlantic Ocean surrounding it. The summer sea subject—blue water, brilliant light, white foam against granite—gave him ideal conditions for his Impressionist color language, the intense outdoor light providing maximum chromatic opportunity. The Toledo canvas is among the most resolved of his Shoals seascape compositions from the early 1900s.

The summer sea is built up in vibrating strokes of complementary blue and green, the white foam at the rocks' base treated in thick, broken paint that captures the energy of water against stone. Hassam deploys the full luminosity of his palette here, the summer sunlight pressing every color toward its maximum intensity.