Ernest Haskell

Ernest Haskell was born on June 30, 1876, Woodstock, Connecticut. His mother was Caledonia deRennes Haskell and his father was Besture Haskell. Ernest spent his childhood on the Haskell farm and attended Woodstock Academy. While convalescing from an attack of typhoid fever, he passed the time sketching and drawing. His artwork attracted attention which led to an offer of employment in the field of magazine illustration. Soon he was working in New York City as a professional artist in the art department of the New York American. His techniques were self-taught at this point.

In 1903 Haskell married Elizabeth Louise Foley, a writer and member of New York society. In 1906 the couple bought some land and a farmhouse on the coast of Maine in the town of Phippsburg. They lived there in the summer seasons, returning to New York City during the winter months. Haskell worked on etching and painting in the summers, and on trips to California, while maintaining portrait commissions and commercial work in the winters. In 1915 he was engaged by the newly formed Metro Pictures Corporation (later to become MGM films) as a poster artist. Haskell and Elizabeth had two children, Hildegarde and Eben. During this period Haskell was doing much work in the line of creating etchings, in Maine as well as in California and Florida.

Ernest Haskell served in World War I in the Camouflage Unit. He was one of the artists who developed camouflage painting for the United States Army to disguise battleships and to use on soldiers’ uniforms. His wife Elizabeth contracted influenza in the 1918 flu pandemic and died in New York City. Ernest took the children and went to live in northern California.

In 1920, at the studio of photographer Dorothea Lange, he met Emma Loveland Laumeister. They were married in San Francisco and returned to New York City, where twins Ernest Jr. and Josephine were born. The pattern of dividing time between New York and Maine continued for about four years. At that time, Haskell had been working in watercolors which were admired for their modern style. On November 1, 1925, he was returning to his family in Maine after organizing an exhibition of the new paintings in New York when he was involved in a fatal automobile accident near West Point in Phippsburg, Maine.

The exhibition became a memorial show at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City. Ernest was eulogized by fellow artists and friends John Marin and Childe Hassam among others. Royal Cortissoz called him “a brilliant artist” Henry McBride called him “the American etcher”

• Excerpts taken from Wikipedia, Biography of Ernest Haskel

The Haskell Phippsburg Print Room was generously donated to the Phippsburg Historical Society Museum by the descendants of the Haskell Family in 2025.