All About Celia Thaxter Salon

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David Park Curry, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts, American Painting and Sculpture at the Baltimore Museum of Art, will discuss Celia Thaxter and her Appledore artistic salon at Discover Portsmouth onFebruary 15 at 11AM. Admission for the gallery talk is $10 for members of the Portsmouth Historical Society and $15 for non-members. (Click headline for full article) 

Reservations are required due to limited seating and can be made by calling Discover Portsmouth(603) 436-8433located at 10 Middle Street in Downtown Portsmouth, NH.  Flowers in Winter is made possible by: NBT Bank, Smuttynose Brewing Co., The Portsmouth Brewery, Rolling Green Nursery, Piscataqua Landscaping & Tree Service, and the Shoals Marine Lab.

Dr. Curry’s presentation is part of the exhibit,Flowers in Winter: Celia Thaxter’s Island Garden, now on display at Discover Portsmouth.  Curry also appears in Peter Randall’s new film, “Celia Thaxter’s Island Garden.” Dr. Curry is best known locally for his book, Childe Hassam,An Island Garden Revisited, published in 1990.

The book was the catalogue for an exhibit by the same name that Dr. Curry curated in 1988, which was shown in Denver, the Smithsonian Institution, and Yale.  In addition to his work on Hassam, Dr. Curry has written about James McNeill Whistler, American Impressionism, and Winslow Homer. He serves on many national arts related committees and has served as a senior position at the Freer Gallery of Art, the Virginia Museum of Art, and the Denver Museum of Art. 

America’s leading Impressionist, Childe Hassam, produced some 400 paintings on the Isles of Shoals. As a young man, Hassam, met Celia Thaxter, gave her painting lessons and, with her encouragement, painted annually on Appledore from the 1880s until 1914. When Celia was urged by her friends to write about her unique cutting garden, Hassam produced the illustrations for the resulting book,An Island Garden, published in June 1894, just three months before Celia’s death.  Artists Hassam and J. Appleton Brown, author Sarah Orne Jewett, and musician William Mason were present for her funeral on the island.

Flowers in Winter: Celia Thaxter’s Island Gardenwill brighten up your darkest winter days.  Peter Randall and contemporary artists Christopher Volpe and Dustan Knight have teamed up to deliver a colorful 21st century response to the famous flower garden that 19th century writer Celia Thaxter cultivated in the six inches of soil on the timeless, rocky island of Appledore, Isles of Shoals. The exhibit can be viewed outside of scheduled gallery talks by appointment untilMarch 8by calling Discover Portsmouth (603) 436-8433. For more information about the exhibit or events at Discover Portsmouth, please visit us at PortsmouthHistory.org.