Immediately after his second sojourn in France Dow made A Bit of Ipswich (fig. 7) as an illustration for The Visitor, a new upmarket magazine published in Salem, Massachusetts. (1.)

…this river view demonstrates many of Dow’s new skills. He established a foreground with a casual line of plants and presented the river on a diagonal perspective leading the eye to distant hills; he rendered the workaday buildings (clam shacks-editor) as an attractive ensemble and evoked a lively play of light on their walls, the sails, and the reflections in the river. (2.)

We take pleasure in presenting to our readers in this first number of The Visitor, a picture entitled “A bit of Ipswich River” which was etched expressly for this paper by Mr. Arthur Dow of Ipswich, who has recently returned to his native town after having achieved high honor in Paris. (3.)

This rare unmailed gelatin-silver post card with undivided backing can be dated 1902-05. (4.)

1. Excerpt: Trevor Fairbrother: Ipswich Days Arthur Wesley Dow and his Hometown, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 2007, p. 15
2. Ibid, p. 15
3. Excerpt: THE VISITOR. Published at Salem, Mass. Fortnightly on Wednesdays. O.W.H. Upham, Publisher and Proprietor, Vol. 1. No. 1, Salem, Mass. May 28, 1890, p. 4.
4. Another extant example held at the MFA in Boston carries a 1905 postal cancellation stamp.