Gloucester Harbor

In the summer of 1877, two summers before his death, William Morris Hunt stayed at Kettle Cove, a fishing village in Gloucester on the coast north of Boston, and the place set him painting landscapes. He worked out of doors, with the late landscapes of Corot and Daubigny in mind, French painters whose work he had seen in Europe and in Boston collections. He painted this view of the harbour in a single afternoon, and wrote of his pleasure in catching the particular opalescent light of the seaside. A wooden pier stands at the left and a dark barge at the right, and the rest of the harbour is set down in quick strokes and pale colour. The museum counts it among his most modern works.

After he died, Isabella Stewart Gardner, the Boston collector who later founded her own museum, bought it at his estate sale in February 1880 for 3,000 dollars. She kept it for 34 years and then gave it to Hunt's daughter, to hang in the Hunt Memorial Gallery just opened at the Museum of Fine Arts.