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metadata embedded, 2020
Childe Hassam
Date: c. 1883
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1989.21
Text Entries: Long before his first-hand exposure to the Paris art scene, Hassam had absorbed the naturalistic principles of the French Barbizon painters championed by Boston's illustrious artist William Morris Hunt (1824-1879). French Peasant Girl is an early oil painting produced by the young artist during his first trip to Europe in 1883. Choosing a Barbizon theme of pastoral imagery rendered in vibrant color, Hassam explored the effects of light, atmosphere and deeply receding space, artistic concerns he revisited throughout his career. While he never returned to rural subjects, Hassam would continue to explore the theme of a solitary woman standing in contemplation in a series of interiors exemplified in the 1915 etching The White Kimono.
Metadata Embedded, 2017
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.
Metadata Embedded, 2019
Childe Hassam
Date: c. 1892
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1992.39
Text Entries: Hassam's interpretation of the promenade-strolling or riding in a carriage by the fashionable class-was particularized by the inclusion of a city's distinctive architectural monuments. His portrait of Boston's Commonwealth Avenue is readily identified by the bell tower of the Brattle Square Church (now the First Baptist Church of Boston) designed by H. H. Richardson in 1882, and the spire of Richard Upjohn's Church of the Covenant (built by Central Church Congregational) in 1865-67. The deeply receding space, created by the strong diagonal perspective of the thoroughfare, suggests the cityscape's magnitude. Still, a utopian urban vision is created by the painting's golden atmospheric veil, the result of the artist's blond palette. Returning to his chosen subject of cityscapes upon leaving Paris in 1889, Hassam developed a tendency to depict the urban landscape through a fragmented composition, palpable atmospheric elements, and loose brushwork resulting in a distinctive immediacy.
Metadata Embedded, 2019
Childe Hassam
Date: 1887
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1993.20
Text Entries: During his first year in Paris, Hassam devoted himself to life drawing studies at the Académie Julian and created this large painting to attract notice at the juried annual salon. In this Latin Quarter street scene near Luxembourg Garden, Hassam's composition employs a dramatic orthogonal perspective, sweeping view, palpable misty atmosphere and precisely rendered figures in the foreground, all united in a blond tonality. Ignoring the picturesque sites and concentrating on the figures of Parisian laborers, Hassam's work lies somewhere between a critique of the complex realties of city life and a presentation of an urban utopia where all classes harmoniously occupy the same public spaces. To Hassam's delight, his adaptation of a rain-slick city street, based on his earlier cityscapes of Boston, was accepted at the Salon-no small feat for a new arrival to the Paris art scene. As he established his career in the United States after 1889, Hassam repeatedly exhibited this early work at public venues, including the prestigious 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Metadata Embedded, 2017
Childe Hassam
Date: 1889
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1991.2
Text Entries: Hassam captured the centennial festivities of Bastille Day, the French equivalent to the United States Independence Day celebration, in Montmartre near his studio. The dominant placement of the tricolored flag, a large, colorful rectangle, set against the curvilinear green hills-les buttes-is complemented by the figures of women, whose picturesque white caps indicate the "Frenchness" of the location for an American audience. Hassam executed a series of flag paintings, most of which were done in May 1917, as part of the patriotic sentiment aroused during World War I. Les Buttes, Montmartre, July 14, 1889 was exhibited in February 1918 with thirty canvases that celebrated Old Glory. Hassam's depiction of the French tricolore is one his first explorations of flags as a national symbol and an artistic investigation of impressionism expressing colorful movement.
metadata embedded, 2021
Childe Hassam
Date: 1889
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1992.40
Text Entries: Maude Doan, who married Hassam in 1884, accompanied him to Paris when he began his academic studies in 1886. Neither a poor student nor a rebellious bohemian artist, Hassam maintained a studio and spacious apartment complete with "French maid." The Hassams' second apartment-cum-studio at 35 Boulevard Rochechouart in Montmartre, the heart of the French art world, is charmingly portrayed in Mrs. Hassam and Her Sister. Within the genteel environment, a seated Maude reads sheet music as her sister Mrs. George Cotton plays the piano. A reference to the adjoining studio is supplied through the artist's paintings that decorate the walls. Hassam was particularly proud of his atelier, stating " . . . that one side is all glass nearly to the floor, so that I can paint a figure here the same as on the street. That is to say a grey day effect." Exposure to contemporary French art noticeably lightened Hassam's palette while impressionist brushwork began to emerge in his technique. Equally significant is the depiction of a woman in a culturally refined environment-a theme that becomes one of the most popular among American impressionists.
Metadata embedded 4-2021
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.
Metadata Embedded, 2017
Childe Hassam
Date: 1893
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1999.67
Text Entries: Hassam's inclusion in the nation's largest juried art exhibit held at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which marked the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas, was a sign of his established artistic reputation. He was awarded a bronze medal for six major paintings, including Cab Station, Rue Bonaparte, and a group of watercolors shown in the Fine Arts Palace. Executed in the summer of 1893, this canvas depicts the majestic dome of the Crystal Palace. The building dominated the skyline of the park-like Wooded Island, but it was a minor architectural statement in the vast panoply of French Beaux-Arts buildings that comprised the famous "White City." Hassam's free brushwork and high-key color convey a sense of immediacy and a spontaneous response to the excitement of the Fair awash in brilliant sunshine.
Metadata embedded, 2021
Childe Hassam
Date: 1915
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1996.48
Text Entries: Burnside, Kathleen M. and Jeffrey W. Andersen. <i>Childe Hassam in Connecticut</i>. Greenwich, Connecticut: The Lyme Historical Society, 1987, p. 18.<br><br> Cortissoz, Royal and the Leonard Clayton Gallery. <i>Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of Childe Hassam, N.A. </i> San Francisco, California: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1989. No. 47, p. 106–107.<br><br> Larkin, Susan G. <i>The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore</i>. (exh. cat. National Academy of Design). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001. Ill. p. 164 (black & white).<br><br> Reymond, Nathalie. <i>Un regard américain sur Paris</i> (<i>An American Glance at Paris</i>). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1997. Text p. 40; ill. p. 41. [specific reference to Terra print]<br><br> <i>The White Kimono, </i>Frederick Childe Hassam. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1999. Ill. (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]<br><br> Cartwright, Derrick R. <i>The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920</i>. (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]<br><br> Cartwright, Derrick R. <i>L'Héroïque et le quotidian: les artistes américains, 1820–1920</i>. (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]<br><br> Larkin, Susan G. "Childe Hassam: Impressions of Cos Cob." <i>American Art Review</i> 16:4 (July–August 2004): 130–33. Text p. 131; ill. p. 131.<br><br> Weinberg, H. Barbara. <i>Childe Hassam: American Impressionist</i>. (exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004. Text p. 274; fig. 15, p. 14 (color).<br><br> Vanessa Lecomte, editor. <i>Portrait of a Lady: peinture et photographies américains</i>. (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).<br><br> Green, Nancy E. and Christopher Reed, eds. <i>JapanAmerica: Points of Contact, 1876–1970</i>. (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).<br><br>
Metadata embedded, 2021
Childe Hassam
Date: 1916
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1995.1
Text Entries: Hassam returned to printmaking in 1915 after a thirty year hiatus during a stay in Cos Cob, Connecticut where a friend owned a press. Within a year, he had completed over sixty prints, including The White Kimono, 1915, which depicts Helen Burke, a Cos Cob resident, standing by the mantel in Holly House, a boarding house, which served as the gathering place of the local art colony. Hassam's flag series is considered to be one of his greatest artistic achievements. One of his earlier interpretations of flags as both patriotic symbol and artistic device is seen in Les Buttes, Montmartre July 14, 1889, but the direct antecedent to his World War I flag series is the print Washington's Birthday-Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, 1916. The portability of an etching plate rekindled Hassam's interest in the urban street scene. Not far from his Fifth Avenue studio, he captured the frenzy of motorcars converging on Madison Square's Flatiron Building. A cascade of American flags decorate austere architectural facades to honor George Washington's birthday of February 22. For Hassam, the critics and his audience, the flag series became a patriotic statement of America's support of the war effort, of the nation's technology and military superiority, and the triumph of democracy over tyranny.
Metadata embedded, 2021
Childe Hassam
Date: 1920
Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number: 1995.6
Text Entries: After years of peripatetic traveling in the summer months for artistic inspiration, the Hassams bought Willow Bend, a colonial-era house on Long Island. After 1919, their mid-town Manhattan apartment and studio continued to be a winter domicile. However, each May until his death in 1934, Hassam retreated to the wide tree-lined village streets of East Hampton. After World War I, Hassam associated his distinguished New England lineage with Puritan values that he believed were lost in contemporary society's "melting pot" of cultures. Devoted to the colonial revival phenomenon, the artist selected New England subjects that, for him, symbolized a unified and, supposedly, homogenous society. Ironically, Hassam blended cultures in this print by portraying an exemplary subject of Yankee America in a style-impressionistic-associated with French art. The dappled sunshine that falls on the gray shingled exterior of the Lion Gardiner House, which was named for its distinguished colonial owner, is a tribute to French impressionism.