Clamming at Shelter Island

A strong cross-current of early French impressionism influenced a number of prominent post-Civil War artists working on the East End, including Thomas Moran, William Merritt Chase, and Frank Myers Boggs, who studied art in Paris under French painter and teacher Jean-Léon Gérôme . Several years before Boggs left for his training in France, he painted this remarkable scene of African Americans clamming in the turbulent waters off of Shelter Island.