Childe Hassam and the French impressionists

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1999

When Frederick Childe Hassam died in 1935 he was hailed as the dean of American painting. For decades he had been in the forefront of modern painting in the United States, his work acquired by major museums and private collectors. His paintings of the streets of Paris, Boston, and New York City of the 1880s and 1890s were considered triumphs of modernism. The broken brushwork and high-key palette of his evocative landscapes and floral views on the Isles of Shoals, New England harbors, and Long Island meadows were peerless impressionist visions.

About the time of his third trip to Europe in 1896 he began to experiment within the strategies of postimpressionism. After the turn of the century he was one of the group of breakaway artists known as the Ten, and the one the press considered the most radical. During World War I his patriotic visions of flag-draped avenues proved to be both compelling and provocative. To many, these are the most memorable paintings of the era.

Over the course of his life, Hassam became increasingly nationalistic, especially regarding art. He disclaimed significant European influences on his work and said that although he was compared to Claude Monet, the French master affected his aesthetic very little. In his later years, he consistently and vigorously denied Monet's influence. However, upon investigation it becomes clear that Hassam, like all painters, was not immune to the artistic currents around him. From his early years in Boston to his many trips to Europe he reacted to the immense variety of art he saw, integrating some of it into his own painting. The influence of the French impressionists on Hassam is the focus of this article.

Hassam was born in 1859 in Dorchester, then a rural suburb (and now a part) of Boston when that city was known as the Athens of America for its central place in music, literature, painting, and architecture. After acquiring some academic art training and spending a few years as a professional illustrator in Boston, Hassam toured European galleries with a friend in 1883. Upon his return he exhibited some sixty watercolors he had painted during his trip. At that time he espoused Boston's modified version of Barbizon painting as interpreted by William Morris Hunt (1824-1879). The Barbizon painters Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) and Jean Francois Millet (1814-1875) were especially popular in Boston, and tonal light effects, a monochromatic palette, and rural subjects were in vogue. After Hassam's return from Europe, other influences on his style became immediately apparent.

Monet, Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and the core group of French impressionists dominated the attention of the press and public in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s, but in Boston the French realists, who painted in a more traditional style, held sway in the early 1880s. These artists chiefly chose subjects related to urban life, specifically bustling street scenes and views of the well-dressed middle class in parks, at racetracks, and along the rivers. Generally these paintings were crisply lit and carefully drawn, with attention paid to dress, gesture, and architecture.

As one art historian has written:

Numerous paintings by [Jean] Beraud and [Giuseppe] De Nittis, [were] owned by collectors in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago....In addition, engravings after cityscapes by...De Nittis... appeared in contemporary publications....De Nittis' work may have been further popularized by...lengthy articles on him in the Gazette des Beaux Arts in 1881 and 1884. More significant for Hassam, perhaps, was the publication in Boston in 1883 of Henry Bacon's Parisian Art and Artists, which devoted an entire chapter to a discussion of Beraud...Grandjean, and De Nittis. Finally, Hassam may have had the opportunity to see De Nittis' Place de la Concorde (1875; Palazzo del Governo, Constantinople), a rainy urban scene, at the Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition in New York in 1883.(*)

One of Hassam's first major paintings, Rainy Day, Boston (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio) of 1885, follows the street scenes of De Nittis in its composition. The broad foreground and dramatic linear perspective immediately arrest the viewers attention and lead the eye to the distant background. With an essentially monochromatic palette, Hassam carefully delineated the architecture and the figures enveloped in the hazy atmosphere, while the wet streets reflect the light and sky. De Nittis painted the streets of Paris and London in the same way. His National Gallery, London (Musee du Petit Palais, Paris) of 1869-1870 is typical: the broad foreground, deep perspective, and crowd of Londoners, lead the eye to the distant background.

Hassam went to Paris with his wife, Maude, in 1886 and stayed three years at 11, boulevard de Clichy, just a step from the Place Pigalle in Montmartre, the artistic center of Paris. His building housed the studios of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931), and Frank Boggs (1855-1926), a fellow American. His neighbors included Paul Signac (1863-1935) and Georges Seurat (1859-1891), among many other painters, French and foreign.