Bleak House, Broadstairs

Bleak House, Broadstairs
Frederick Childe Hassam

Artist Biography
Acquisition Number: 2017.83
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Size: 13 1/2 x 9 3/4 in.
Date: 1889
Credit: Purchased by the Canton Museum of Art

In the very background of this watercolor, slightly left of center, is Bleak House (formerly named Fort House). Bleak House is a prominent house in the United Kingdom on the cliff overlooking the North Foreland and Viking Bay in Broadstairs, Kent. It was built around 1801. Charles Dickens spent summer holidays at Bleak House in the 1850s and 1860s, and it was there that he wrote David Copperfield. It's fitting that the main subject of this piece - the woman in white in the foreground - is reading a book.