William Stanley Haseltine

1835-1900

William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900) painted the rocky coasts of New England and the sunlit shores of Italy with a clarity of light and geological precision that links him to American Luminism. Born in Philadelphia, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard before sailing to Europe, joining the American painters' colony at Düsseldorf and travelling through the Rhineland, Switzerland, and Italy, sketching around Rome and Capri. Back in the United States by 1859, he worked from New York's Tenth Street Studio Building alongside Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt, winning recognition for his precise views of Narragansett, Nahant, and Mount Desert Island, and was elected to the National Academy of Design. From 1867 he made Rome his permanent base, painting Capri, Sicily, and scenes across France, the Low Countries, and the Alps, with occasional trips back to America. He died in Rome in 1900. His paintings are now held in American museums including the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.