Winter Dawn at Boston’s T Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts, 1910

oil, 24” x 44”

$45,000

You can just feel the crisp, cold air of the frozen waterfront in this atmospheric and complex painting. Blossom's drawing of the multiple perspectives of vessels and architecture is simply impeccable. While the scene appears still, a close inspection reveals a tug gently nosing the Schooner Flora Nickerson into her berth, alongside Regina, while her crew gestures directions in the moonlight.

The center of Boston's waterfront community, the origins of Boston’s T Wharf go back as early as the 1720s. As a spur of Long Wharf, it was then known as Minot’s T, the “T" being formed by the connection between the two wharves. It was known as the center of the Boston fisheries, particularly from the mid-1880s until 1914 when overcrowding and limited water rights necessitated the building of a new wharf known as the South Boston Fish Pier.

The schooner just arriving in from the banks is the Flora Nickerson, built in 1902 at Essex, Massachusetts by James & Tarr. She is one of Thomas McManus' Indian Headers, so called because the first spoon-bowed schooners had Indian names. She will be put alongside the big clipped-bowed Regina, reported to be tile fastest schooner out of Boston. The Regina, built in 1901 at the A.D. Story yard of Essex, sailed from Boston until she was laid up in 1911. In 1913, she was sold to owners in Maine who apparently used her as a coaster until 1917, when she again went fishing. She was lost by fire in the Cape Verde Islands. The Nickerson was sold to Newfoundland owners in 1911 and disappeared in the records after 1924.