Childe Hassam

In family background and outlook, Frederick Childe Hassam was a patriotic American, proud of his deep New England roots and serious about raising the status of American art in the world. As an artist, he achieved considerable success with his thorough mastery of French Impressionist painting techniques, which he used to depict city life in Boston and then New York, as well as elegant interiors and landscapes. Done en plein air, his landscapes were often painted during regular summer sojourns to various artists’ colonies. Along with painters William Merritt Chase and John Twachtman, Hassam is the artist most often identified as an American Impressionist. With Twachtman and J(ulian) Alden Weir, Hassam was a co-founder of The Ten American Painters, a loosely organized group of artists whose Impressionist-inspired work was shown in annual exhibitions from 1898 to 1919. These small and expertly presented exhibitions did much to encourage a growing interest on the part of the American public in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist European and American art. Initially in the avant-garde of American art, the work of The Ten would eventually seem conservative and escapist in comparison to its successor, twentieth-century Modernism.

Hassam was born in Dorchester, now a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. An early interest in art was encouraged, especially by his mother and aunt. He left Dorchester High School early to work only three weeks as an accountant for Little, Brown and Co. publishers before becoming a “draughtsman” there, learning wood engraving and commercial lithography from George Johnson in 1879. He furthered his art training by enrolling in evening classes in drawing and painting at the Lowell Institute. By 1882, Hassam was listed as an artist in the Boston Directory, had exhibited both oil and watercolor paintings at the Boston Art Club and the Williams and Everett Gallery, and was successful in selling his work. In 1883 he became a member of the Paint and Clay Club, rented a studio on Tremont Street, and first visited Appledore Island in the Isle of Shoals, New Hampshire, the site of a vibrant artists’ colony. Hassam was introduced to Appledore by his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter whose family owned Appledore House, a resort hotel on the island. It was Thaxter who had advised the young artist to drop the use of his first name, Frederick, in favor of his middle name Childe. In 1894, Celia Thaxter’s An Island Garden was published, fully illustrated with Hassam’s watercolors. Hassam’s experience of life in an artists’ colony by the sea was one he would seek out again and again during summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts; Greenwich, Cos Cob, and Old Lyme, Connecticut; and East Hampton, Long Island in New York.

1883 was also the year Hassam made his first trip to Europe, primarily as a tourist but still making watercolors and sketches of his travels. He later recalled liking J. M. W. Turner’s watercolors [1] but didn’t recall any particular works by artists of the École des Beaux-Arts or the Barbizon School. Nor did he recall seeing any work by the Impressionists. Hassam returned to Boston, studied life drawing at the Boston Art Club, continued his illustration work and painted. He had an 1886 exhibition at the Society of American Artists in New York.

In 1886, Hassam and his wife [2] moved to Paris. There he enrolled in classes at the Académie Julian, but, after a year and a half of instruction under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger, he abandoned his academic training, later saying that “It is nonsense. It crushes all originality out of the growing men. It tends to put them in a rut and keeps them in it.” [3] In Paris, he continued to paint, exhibit, and become more and more influenced by Impressionism, especially Renoir and Monet, although unlike the Impressionists he would exhibit at the Paris Salon from 1887 to 1890, as well as the famous 1889 Exposition Universelle, where he won a bronze medal.

Upon the Hassams’ return to the United States in 1889, they settled in New York City. Hassam, now a painter fully immersed in the Impressionist style, was active in artistic circles, exhibited widely, won awards, and enjoyed brisk sales. Hassam’s active participation in the art world of New York City did not prevent him from travelling and exhibiting around the United States. He would also return for more visits to Europe. Hassam produced what is probably his best-known work, the 1918-19 series of “Flag” paintings, based on the display of patriotic bunting and flags in New York City on Allies Day, May 1918. He would receive over thirty artistic awards in his lifetime.

Hassam was a regular participant in annual exhibitions of the American Water Color Society, the New-York Water Color Club (which he founded), the National Academy of Design and the Society of American Artists. He became friendly with fellow artists John Twachtman and J. Alden Weir, with whom he would establish The Ten American Painters in 1898. “The Ten” was formed when the artists resigned from the Society of American Artists in order to have more control over the exhibition of their work. Inspired by Whistler and the Aesthetic movement, the members of the Ten wished to have smaller exhibitions overall, with plenty of wall space so that each artwork could be seen to advantage. Great attention was given to the design of painting frames and wall color to achieve a harmonious effect. Unlike other arts organizations, there were no prizes awarded and the members self-selected the work to be exhibited.

Hassam was active in many arts organizations. He was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1906. In 1917, he was a founder, along with George Bellows, John Sloan, John Marin, and J. Alden Weir, of the Painter-Gravers of America. In 1920 he would be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was also recognized for his work in 1934 by the American Art Dealers Association, receiving the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Fine Art. He was awarded the National Academy of Design’s Saltus Medal for Merit in early spring of 1935. It was to the Academy that Hassam bequeathed his artistic estate, to be sold and the proceeds given to establish the Hassam Fund to purchase work by Canadian and American artists to place in Canadian and American museums. In 1936, the year after his death at the age of seventy-five in East Hampton, Long Island, the proceeds from the settling of his estate were $212,750, the equivalent of 3.3 million dollars today, and these funds were also given to the Hassam Fund. [4]

With the development of the Modernist and Regionalist schools of art, critical interest waned for American Impressionism during the 1920s and 1930s. It would not be until 1973 with two important exhibitions: American Impressionism organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the exhibition of the Margaret and Raymond J. Horowitz Collection of American Impressionism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that there would be a resurgence of commercial and scholarly attention in Hassam and the other American Impressionists. In 2004, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted a major retrospective and published an exhibition catalog on Hassam’s fifty year career, Childe Hassam, American Impressionist.

Notes:

[1] Herdich, Stephanie L. “Childe Hassam in Boston, 1859-1886,”Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p. 34

[2] Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doane (1862-1946) in 1884. She frequently appears in his paintings. They had no children.

[3] Weinberg, H. Barbara. Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p 82.

[4] Weinberg, H. Barbara. Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p. 372.