Martha Hale Harvey

1863 - 1949

Martha Hale Harvey was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on June 4, 1863. The oldest of four children, she was the daughter of Charles and Sarah C. Friend Rogers. She grew up on Prospect Court and Apple Street in Gloucester and attended the Sawyer School. She was a close friend of Anna Hyatt Huntington, the Annisquam sculptor.

How Martha Hale Harvey developed her interest in photography or where she got her training remains a mystery. But by the mid-1880s she had become an active and technically skilled photographer with an acute artistic eye. From the 1880s until the 1920s she set about capturing the seascapes and harbor scenes of Gloucester, Rockport, and Magnolia, as well as the clammers and fishermen, yachtsmen and sailors, schooners and dories, and wharves and landscapes of Annisquam and all of Cape Ann. These images remain in the collections of the Cape Ann Museum and the Annisquam Historical Society as well as in private collections. Most of her photographic negatives exist in the form of glass plates, and one can only imagine the challenge of carting cameras and plates from wharf to marsh, to beach to pasture, in order to capture these images.

left Martha Hale Harvey in the Annisquam studio she shared with her husband George Harvey, c. 1888. right Martha Hale Harvey with camera, Stowe Vermont trip. Both photographs taken by her sister Annie F. Rogers. From the collection of the Cape Ann Museum Library & Archives, Gloucester, MA.

In 1884 Martha married George Wainwright Harvey, an artist from East Gloucester. In 1894 Martha and George established adjoining studios at 47 River Road in Annisquam. Martha Harvey produced her photographs in black and white, sepia, platinum, carbon, and chalk methods. Martha and George are known to have given frequent lantern slide shows in the village of Annisquam. The Cape Ann Museum has more than 100 of her lantern slides depicting fishermen, village scenes and Gloucester townscapes.

In many cases, George Harvey’s paintings were either based upon the subject matter and composition of Martha’s photos or a direct reproduction of her photographs. Often times she then photographed his paintings, and those images are also now a part of the Cape Ann Museum and Annisquam Historical Society collections.

Martha Hale Harvey died in January of 1949 at the age of 86 years.