Frederick Childe Hassam
(American, 1859–1935 )
Public Common, Woodstock, New York
n.d. (ca. 1891)
pastel on paper, 17 1/2" x 21 3/8"
Gift of Mrs. E. L. Tuohy Thought
to be the most accomplished of all American impressionists,
Frederick Childe Hassam began his career as an apprentice to
the wood engraver George E. Johnson around 1879 and then worked
as a freelance illustrator for newspapers and popular magazines
such as Scribner’s, Century, and Harper’s. In the
late 1870s Hassam studied with the local artist William Rimmer,
and at the Boston Art Club and Lowell Institute. Initially
his watercolor landscapes and Boston street scenes reflected
the academic realism and dark, muted palette of the Munich
and French Barbizon schools. In 1883 Hassam made his first
visit to Europe, traveling in Great Britain, France, Italy,
Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Spain. During his travels
he produced scores of watercolors depicting urban scenes, which
were looser in brushwork and lighter in palette than his earlier
Barbizon-inspired works. Having achieved success in Europe,
Hassam returned to Boston, where his reputation continued to
grow. In 1886 Hassam and his wife embarked on a three-year
stay in Europe, where he studied at the Academie Julian and
traveled throughout France and England. Hassam was inspired
by his contact with works by Claude Monet and other French
impressionists, and by the many American artists working in
France. However, where the French impressionists were primarily
interested in the optical effects of their new painting style,
Hassam was more interested in using it to depict the everyday
activities of urban life. In other words, his preoccupation
was with subject over style or technique.
In an interview (published circa 1894) he stated. “There
is nothing so interesting to me as people. I am never tired
of observing them in every-day life, as they hurry through
the Streets on business or saunter down the promenade on pleasure.
Humanity in motion is a continual study to me.”
On his return to America in 1889 Hassam settled in New York
City, devoting himself to impressionistically painted depictions
of urban life, and views in and around many rural New England
towns. Public Common, Woodstock, New York, clearly reflects
Hassam’s application of impressionist techniques, and
demonstrates his mastery of the pastel medium. He was a member
of the Society of Painters in Pastel, which held exhibitions
between 1884 and 1890, and established the importance of the
medium among artists, critics and collectors of the day. Public
Common, Woodstock can be dated with relative certainty to sometime
after 1890, when Hassam was known to be visiting smaller New
England towns, and to have spent two summers in Woodstock,
sketching and painting local scenery. Like many of his larger
oil paintings, this pastel drawing captures a moment of everyday
activity – a woman with a child in a baby carriage rest
at a bench, protected from the sun by the shadows of the village
common’s large trees. Restricted to greens, grays and
browns, the scene is enlivened by Hassam’s use of strong
highlights of white chalk that give the impression of intense
dappled sunlight breaking through the trees. This restricted
palette, a feature of many American impressionist artworks,
also allows the drawing’s emphasis to rest on sharp divisions
of light and dark, rather than on color. As an illustrator,
Hassam’s roots lay in just such manipulation of contrasting
values of one color. It is significant that late in his career,
he returned to the production of etchings and lithographs in
black and white.rairie dogs, realizing the
threat of broken legs their holes posed to horses and cattle. |
