Rocks at Nahant

This seascape depicts the rocky coastline of Nahant—a resort town located on a narrow peninsula in Massachusetts Bay, approximately fifteen miles north of Boston. Haseltine, who sketched along New England’s shores from 1859 to 1865, simplified this composition down to its most essential elements: sky, water, and coastal rocks. A leading painter of shoreline rock formations, he was deeply influenced by prominent geologists of the era, notability Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), who saw in New England’s rocky coasts evidence of the glacial activities of the Ice Age. Topographically accurate and meticulously detailed, Rocks at Nahant reveals Haseltine’s interest in both contemporary science and art criticism, notably the writings John Ruskin, who encouraged artists to paint nature in painstaking detail.