AFA Autumn 2019

Antiques & Fine Art 71 2019 J.O.J. Frost today enjoys a national reputation as a highly original self-taught artist and visual storyteller. At age seventy, following his wife’s death, he began painting and working with found materials to document the history of Marblehead, Massachusetts. This panoramic painting captures Frost’s childhood memory of watching his father and other Marblehead men depart on foot to Faneuil Hall in Boston to enlist in the Civil War. Following the Battle of Fort Sumter earlier that month, President Abraham Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion in the South. Frost’s father died during the war, prompting his son, nearly sixty-five years, later to paint this commemorative scene, which includes the words, “There shall be no more war, nor pain, nor wrath.” Childe Hassam embraced the freestyle brushwork and bright color palettes of French impressionist painters before his American contemporaries. Although this celebrated artist traveled extensively, he found his muse on Appledore Island, the largest of the Isles of Shoals, off the New Hampshire–Maine coast. For three decades, he made the island his summer retreat, wandering the terrain and painting outdoors. Hassam expertly translated recognizable geological and marine features into colors and brushstrokes, capturing the textures and light effects on rock and water. J.O.J. Frost (1852–1928), The March into Boston from Marblehead, April 16, 1861: There Shall Be No More War, ca. 1925. Oil on fiberboard, 31½ x 72 inches. Peabody Essex Museum; Gift of Peter S. Lynch in memory of Carolyn Lynch (2018.72.2). Childe Hassam (1859–1935) East Headland, Appledore, Isles of Shoals, 1911. Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches. Peabody Essex Museum; Gift of Peter S. Lynch in memory of Carolyn Lynch (2018.72.1).