The White Kimono

Childe Hassam's etching of a domestic interior shows a young woman, dressed in a white Japanese kimono patterned with floral sprigs, standing in profile beside an American colonial-style fireplace. Various decorative objects—a china plate, a brass candlestick, and flowers in a vase—are displayed along the white mantelpiece beneath several framed pictures. At right, a footed bowl holding fruit stands on a wood table; at the lower center, an elegant brass andiron marks the edge of the brick-walled hearth, the etching's darkest area, suggested by rows of slanting parallel strokes. Hassam's print echoes seventeenth-century Dutch paintings of domestic interiors while also reflecting influences from the art of influential older American artists James McNeill Whistler and William Merritt Chase, who, like Hassam, were attracted to Japanese aesthetics.

The setting of The White Kimono was a room at Holley House, a genteel boarding house in the picturesque harbor town of Cos Cob, Connecticut, located forty minutes by train from New York City. Beginning in 1894, Hassam regularly visited Cos Cob, a burgeoning summer art colony where his friend John Henry Twachtman taught summer classes. Hassam often resided for weeks at a time at the Holley House (now called the Bush-Holley House, owned by the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich). The house and the scenery of Cos Cob inspired Hassam to make numerous pastels and paintings. Like his fellow artists, he enjoyed working in the old New England town because its gracious setting perpetuated feelings of nostalgia for the past. In communities such as Cos Cob, painters often emulated the design principles of Japanese pictural art and also wrapped their models in kimono-like garments or incorporated Japanese-inspired motifs. Hassam's model was not one of his students, however, but Helen Burke, daughter of the town's Irish tavern-keeper Toby Burke.

Hassam had begun his artistic training in 1876 as an apprentice to a Boston wood engraver, but he did not seriously pursue printmaking until 1915. That year, he commenced etching with the encouragement of his friends and fellow artists J. Alden Weir and Kerr Eby, monopolizing the latter's Cos Cob intaglio press to produce sixty-two etchings during a period of intense printmaking. In November 1915, Hassam included The White Kimono in his first print exhibition, at the New York gallery of Frederick Keppel, Eby's uncle. Over the next two decades, Hassam executed some four hundred prints.

Un regard américain sur Paris (An American Glance at Paris), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 11–October 31, 1997.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1999.

Héroïque et le quotidien: les artistes américains, 1820–1920 (The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 30, 2001. [exh. cat.]

Portrait of a Lady : peintures et photographies américaines en France, 1870–1915 (Portrait of a Lady: American Paintings and Photographs in France, 1870–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France (organizers). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France, April 1–July 14, 2008; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France, September 25, 2008–January 5, 2009 (exhibited in Bordeaux). [exh. cat.]

Japan America: Points of Contact, 1876–1970, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York (organizer). Venues: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York, August 27–December 18, 2016; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, February 12–May 21, 2017. [exh. cat.]

Burnside, Kathleen M. and Jeffrey W. Andersen. Childe Hassam in Connecticut. Greenwich, Connecticut: The Lyme Historical Society, 1987, p. 18.

Cortissoz, Royal and the Leonard Clayton Gallery. Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of Childe Hassam, N.A. San Francisco, California: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1989. No. 47, p. 106–107.

Larkin, Susan G. The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore. (exh. cat. National Academy of Design). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001. Ill. p. 164 (black & white).

Reymond, Nathalie. Un regard américain sur Paris (An American Glance at Paris). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1997. Text p. 40; ill. p. 41. [specific reference to Terra print]

The White Kimono, Frederick Childe Hassam. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1999. Ill. (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Cartwright, Derrick R. The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Text pp. 19, 23 (checklist); fig. 9, p. 19 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Cartwright, Derrick R. L'Héroïque et le quotidian: les artistes américains, 1820–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Text pp. 19, 23 (checklist); fig. 9, p. 19 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Larkin, Susan G. "Childe Hassam: Impressions of Cos Cob." American Art Review 16:4 (July–August 2004): 130–33. Text p. 131; ill. p. 131.

Weinberg, H. Barbara. Childe Hassam: American Impressionist. (exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004. Text p. 274; fig. 15, p. 14 (color).

Vanessa Lecomte, editor. Portrait of a Lady: peinture et photographies américains. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny and Musée des beaux-arts de Bordeaux). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2008. Text p. 94 (checklist).

Green, Nancy E. and Christopher Reed, eds. JapanAmerica: Points of Contact, 1876–1970. (exh. cat., Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University). Ithaca, New York: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 2016. Text p. 57; p. 240, cat. no. 127; ill. p. 240, cat. no. 127 (color).