Mount Chocorua, c. 1895

Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940) studied at the Museum School in Boston in the 1870s. In 1881 she made her way to France where she studied at the atelier of Carolus-Duran, who taught John Singer Sargent among others, and then at the Académie Julian. She returned to France whenever she could traveling to Giverny in the 1890s to learn from Claude Monet. Her colors became lighter and her style more impressionistic. Her painting of Mount Chocorua, a peak that had been sketched by countless White Mountain artists, is clearly impressionistic, reflecting an American artist’s adaptation of the newly prevailing style in France.