Today we share a recent acquisition: Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin’s “The Arab Boy,” created during the artist’s 1905-06 trip to Algeria. This painting, an oil on board, shows a young man in flowing garments looking to the horizon. On the reverse there’s a second painting, an incomplete view of a hay wagon in a landscape.

This painting is the fourth work the NHA has acquired this year by Coffin, the most important female artist associated with Nantucket from the turn of the twentieth century. The museum has also acquired “The Old Falconer of Ben Gana, Sheik of the Ziban” (also from Coffin’s trip to Algeria), a pastel portrait of a woman, and a still life of chrysanthemums.

Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850–1930) was a painter, educator, and philanthropist. Born in Brooklyn, where she lived most of her life, she studied at Vassar College, the Academy of Fine Arts in the Hague, the Art Students League in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Among her instructors were Johan Philip Koelman, William Merritt Chase, and Thomas Eakins, whose realist approach is evident in Coffin’s surviving works. Her father was from Nantucket and a descendant of the early English settlers; in the early 1880s, she began summering on island, eventually buying a house in which she later retired. Her signal achievement for Nantucket was the revival and transformation of the Coffin School, which she helped guide for more than two decades.

Both “The Arab Boy” and “The Old Falconer” are gifts of the Friends of the NHA. The still life is an NHA purchase; the pastel portrait is an NHA purchase underwritten by Thomas & Connie Cigarran, Anne & Todd Knutson, and Margaret Hallowell & Stephen Langer. ...

This Veterans Day, we are excited to share we have been gifted additional items relating to the life of U.S. Navy Commander John Franklin Walling, who was lost at sea in 1945 while commanding the submarine USS Snook during World War II.

This past August, the NHA announced it would receive Commander Walling’s commissioning sword from Raymond F. DuBois, who received it from his mother, Annabella Walling DuBois, Walling’s widow.

Following this announcement, we were contacted by Susan Carpenter, whose grandparents and mother had been dear friends of Annabella Walling and who, remarkably, was in possession of Walling’s diaries from 1933–40. After years of trying to find someone to return the diaries to, she was delighted to place them in the NHA’s care to accompany Commander Walling’s sword. They record Walling’s time at the U.S. Naval Academy and his early years in military service.

In addition to the serendipitous gift of Walling’s diaries, Raymond F. DuBois and his family discovered a trove of photographs and documents related to Walling’s life and naval career, including the letters to his wife during World War II that pick up where his diaries leave off. The DuBois family has presented these to the NHA in honor of Annabella Walling DuBois.

The NHA extends a special thank you to Raymond F. DuBois and his family, as well as Susan Carpenter for their generous gifts to the NHA’s collection that will allow for a complete story to be told to honor the life of Commander John Franklin Walling through further research and future exhibitions.

To learn more about these exciting acquisitions to the collection, click the link in our story to read the full press releases. ...