Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1847, Hendricks Hallett is primarily known as a marine painter. Based in Boston, his watercolors and oils were predominately painted in and around Boston Harbor, along the north shore to Marblehead, and in Bar Harbor and on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Hallett was one of a group of active resident artists in the greater Boston area, including William Halsall (1841-1919), Walter Lansil (1846-1925), and William Norton (1843-1916), who had made a career of painting marine subjects, and all of whom showed their marine paintings regularly at the Boston Art Club in the 1870s. In doing so, these artists helped to establish a wider market for marine painting and formed, for newer painters, a body of successful working marine artists.

Hallett showed an interest in art at an early age, despite his father's attempts to persuade him to enter the business world. Shortly after his marriage in 1872, he and his wife sailed for Europe, where Hallett spent the ensuing eighteen months studying painting in Antwerp and Paris. Upon his return from Europe, he established a studio in Boston and launched his professional career as an artist. He first appeared in the Boston City Directory in 1877 as a marine painter in a studio at 42 Court Street. In 1899, Hallett moved to the Studio Building in Boston and in 1907, he moved to the newly finished Fenway studios.

Hallett was a member of the Boston Art Club and the Boston Society of Watercolor Painters and he exhibited his oils and watercolors regularly at the Boston Art Club from 1877-1918. He also exhibited his work at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Charitable Mechanics Society, where he won a bronze medal in 1892. In 1886, he was given a solo exhibition at the J. Eastman Chase Gallery in Boston. He also exhibited at the Williams and Everett Gallery and the Jordan Marsh Gallery.

The present work Nahant, Massachusetts, is a beautiful example of the style and subject matter that was popularized by a number of Boston based marine artists in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Featuring the working beaches along the picturesque shore just north of Boston, these artists sensitively portrayed not only the beaches but also the indigenous beach shacks, the fisherman, their fishing gear, and their vessels. Their interest in such scenes was enhanced by their travels in England and Europe, where similar everyday scenes were attracting painters who would come to be called Impressionists. These artists translated a love and sense of place onto the canvas in such a way that we can still feel their attachment to their subjects and the life that went with it. Not only is Hallett's "Nahant" masterfully executed and a quintessential representation of these themes, but it further serves as a vivid historical document of an era and an area that has since seen many changes.