Childe Hassam: patterns of appreciation.(painter)(Cover Story)

Childe Hassam (Fig. 1) was a prolific pioneer of American impressionism. (1) Trained first in Boston as a watercolorist and illustrator, he learned oil painting at several schools and through contact with a number of artists. His New England oils and watercolors, such as The Old Fairbanks House, Dedham, Massachusetts (Pl. II), focus on verdant pastoral landscape and evocative colonial architecture, echoing the prevailing Boston taste for Barbizon naturalism. In 1883 he made his first trip abroad, not to study but to see the sights in Great Britain and on the Continent.

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In February 1884 Hassam married Kathleen Maud Doane (1862-1946), a native of Montreal, and moved into an apartment on Columbus Avenue in Boston's recently expanded South End. There he painted a series of remarkable street scenes, including Rainy Day, Columbus Avenue, Boston (Pl. III), probably under the influence of European painters of the juste milieu such as Giuseppe de Nittis (1846-1884) and Jean Beraud (1849-1935). (2) Hassam could also have seen French impressionist paintings in Boston's Foreign Exhibition and New York's Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition, both held in 1883; on his 1883 trip to Europe; and in a huge exhibition organized by the Paris art firm Galeries Durand-Ruel in the spring of 1886 that was shown first at the American Art Association and then at the National Academy of Design, both in New York City. (3)

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Hassam finally went to Europe to study in the fall of 1886, accompanied by his wife. They rented an apartment with an adjoining studio at the edge of Montmartre, and Hassam enrolled shortly thereafter in the popular Academie Julian. He worked hard as a student, although he never overcame a tendency to render figures schematically. More mature personally and professionally than most American art students in Paris, he caught the spirit of impressionism while most of his compatriots were still ignoring it. His liberated brushwork and lightened palette are evident in pictures such as Grand Prix Day (Pl. I), but in canvases such as April Showers, Champs Elysees, Paris (Pl. IV) he just as willingly slipped back into the tonal manner he had used in Boston.