South Coast of Block Island
by William Frederick de Haas (1830–1880)8 x 14 inches
Signed and indistinctly dated lower right: William F. de Haas; on verso: South Coast of Block island
Provenance
Robert Hall Fine Arts, St. James, New York
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, acquired from above, 1998
Private collection, acquired from above, 1998
Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, New York, January 20, 2024, lot 26, from above
Note: Block Island is located approximately 9 miles south of mainland Rhode Island.
Artist Biography
William Frederick de Haas’s coastal scenes put forward a pictorial language of serenity, silence, and solitude. Born in Holland, de Haas studied at The Hague and moved to the United States at the age of twenty-four. Armed with the precepts of Dutch painting, he turned his attention to the American coast. He worked in New York’s Tenth Street Studio Building alongside his brother Mauritz, his fellow Dutchman Kruseman Van Elten, and the leading artists of the Hudson River School, and became one of the nineteenth century’s few marine specialists. His expansive scenes of Maine, Long Island, and Newfoundland provide an