Impressionist & Post-Impressionist
CHILDE HASSAM (1859–1935)
New England Village Street, about 1891–94
Watercolor on paper, 9 x 11 1/2 in.
Signed (at lower right): Childe Hassam
RECORDED: “The Fine Arts. The Exhibition of the Water-Color Society and the New York Etching Club,” The Critic 21 (February 10, 1894), p. 101
EXHIBITED: (possibly) American Water Color Society, New York, February 5–March 3, 1894, 27th Annual Exhibition, no. 278, as “New England Village Street”
EX COLL.: the artist; (possibly) to sale, American Art Association, American Art Galleries, New York, February 7, 1896, Paintings, Pastels and Water Colors by Childe Hassam, no. 153, as “New England Village Street”; [Bernard Danenberg Galleries, New York, 1969]; to Sylvia Ginsburg, Fort Lee, New Jersey, 1969–2022
As well as exemplifying Hassam’s concern for painting images of the “home grounds” that he knew and loved so well, New England Village Street underscores his expert manipulation of watercolor, a transparent, fast-drying medium that required an artist work quickly and with great control. Drawn to its immediacy and directness, its portability, and its innate light-reflecting quality, Hassam was a devoted watercolorist, contributing to its popularity among art aficionados through his participation in the exhibitions of the American Water Color Society and later the New York Water-Color Club. In keeping with the verve and spontaneity associated with this challenging mode of painting, Hassam portrays his subject with broad, gestural strokes, alternating between thin washes and more opaque areas of color to evoke the fleeting play of sunlight and shadow on the setting. His deft melding of impressionist brushwork within a realist framework likewise evokes the appeal of country living as experienced in this unique part of America––a reminder, as the writer Herbert Wendell Gleason stated, that “There’s no place like New England.... the New England environment, taken altogether, in its adaptation to the realization of the best ideals of home, is unmatched anywhere else in the world” (Herbert Wendell Gleason, “The Old Farm Revisited,” New England Magazine n.s. 22 [August 1900], pp. 679–80).
