Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam

Date: c. 1890

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.66

Text Entries: The pulsating life of urban streets, a subject few American artists had explored, was a life-long fascination for Hassam. Especially attractive to him were rainy days and nights when the streets were shrouded in mist, and lights and shadows were reflected in gleaming surfaces. Apart from their picturesque qualities, Hassam's fondness for portraying horse-drawn cabs is linked to his use of them as a mobile studio, the small seat in front of him serving as an easel. Watercolors were Hassam's chosen medium when he first exhibited in Boston. After relocating to New York City in 1889, he became an active member of the American Watercolor Society and served as first President of the New York Water Color Club.

Childe Hassam

Date: 1892

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.38

Text Entries: As part of the massive public relations effort to overcome Chicago's reputation as a rough-and-tumble, disorderly and even dangerous place, artists were commissioned to execute views of the yet unfinished Exposition buildings in the months before the Fair opened. Hassam painted at least six large, detailed watercolor portraits of major exposition buildings, as well as a number of smaller, monochromatic views with more casual compositions of which Columbian Exposition, Chicago is one. Portraying the north facade of the United States Government Building with the footbridge that crossed the Lagoon to the Fisheries Building, Hassam's watercolor is an imagined scene that is convincingly realistic in its portrayal of reflected light on water and the crush of fair visitors.