Henry Stephens Eddy

Henry Stephens Eddy spent his professional painting life living on Nantucket, Massachusetts, having come to the island in 1922. He was born in Rahway, New Jersey in 1875, the son of Charles Eddy and Edith Harriet Stephens, married in 1901 Catherine Day Cleveland and had one daughter in 1903. He also lived for a short period in Upper Montclair, NJ before heading for Cape Cod in the teens.

Eddy painted Nantucket and Cape Cod landscapes in an impressionistic manner, being highly influenced by the outdoor painting techniques of William Merritt Chase, Frank W. Benson, John Henry Twachtman and other eminent American painters.

Eddy was a prominent member of the Nantucket Art Colony from its inception in 1920 until his death in Nantucket in 1944. He created vibrant canvases of Nantucket’s rambling lanes, alleys, waterfront, dunes and sandy landscape, using a bright palette and generous swaths of paint applied with a brush or palette knife (later in life), mixed with choppy, expressive brushwork. A review of the East Street Gallery’s first exhibition signaled out Eddy with praise:  “One feels in [his work] the beauty and quietude of the early morning” (Inquirer and Mirror).  A reviewer of the 1923 Candle House Studio on Nantucket wrote, “The colorful charm of…Monday mornings has been finely caught by Henry S. Eddy.” (NHA Digital Exhibition, The Nantucket Art Colony, 1920-1945).

Eddy discovered the island of Nantucket after being a member of the Provincetown Art Colony on Cape Cod, and visiting the island with members of the Art Students League (NYC). He was a student of art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and the Art Students League (NYC) and was instructed by John Henry Twachtman and Stephen A. D. Volk. Through a Montclair, NJ friend, Eddy and his wife rented a waterfront studio from Florence Lang in the summer of 1922.

As a member of the Nantucket Art Colony, Eddy and his wife lived at the Barnsite on lower Main Street (Miss May Congdon was in charge of the studio), the Forge Studio on Main Street and purchased a home at 119 Main Street. He also was a member of the Pacific Club and he was the great-grandson of a New Bedford captain of the whale ship Ann and Mary. In 1946, Eddy was honored at a retrospective exhibition at the Kenneth Taylor Galleries along with Ramsdell Congdon, Edgar Jenney, Emerson Tuttle and Eastman Johnson. He is primarily known for his luscious Nantucket landscapes that are painted with vigor and confidence. He exhibited at the National Academy and in galleries on Cape Cod and Nantucket.

Literature: Mallett, D.T., Index of Artists (1948), p. 811; Optiz, Glenn B., Mantle Fieldings Dictionary of American Painters…, 1986, p. 1081; Falk, Peter, Annual Exhibition of the National Academy, 1901-1950, p. 622; Blasdale, Mary J., Artists of New Bedford, p. 6 (1990); Who Was Who in American Art, , p. 707 (1999); Davenport’s Art Reference, the Golden Edition (2005); Nantucket Historical Association records