Moonlight Seascape, Gloucester Harbor

Mary Blood Mellen was an American painter associated with the Hudson River School of artists in 19th-century New England. Her paintings often included landscapes and maritime images. The present work is one among a series of moonlight seascapes the artist produced throughout the 1870s. Most of Mellen's moonlight paintings are views across Gloucester Harbor, with the lighthouse on Ten Pound Island in the far left distance. The present work follows the same compositional format as Mellen's others from the period: rendered with ambient light, amorphous rocks that form the Gloucester coastline, and a beached ship parked on the shore.