拍品专文
Childe Hassam's views of Fifth Avenue have long been acknowledged as masterworks of American Impressionism, and Lower Fifth Avenue is among the artist's finest Impressionistic canvases of New York's most fashionable thoroughfare. After his return to New York in 1889 having lived in Paris for three years, Hassam moved into a studio apartment at 95 Fifth Avenue at Seventeenth Street, and he was immediately attracted to the celebrated avenue. A few years later in 1892 he said, "I believe the thoroughfares of the great French metropolis are not one whit more interesting than the streets of New York."
Hassam's fascination with New York has been the subject of considerable scholarship. Dr. William H. Gerdts has written, "Fifth Avenue attracted Childe Hassam almost immediately after he settled in New York in late 1889, and by 1919 it was noted that he 'has been Fifth Avenue's historian for years.' . . . Much of Hassam's painting, especially at this period in his career, was devoted to expressing traditional American subjects and values in the most modern of aesthetics, and his New York scenes are no exception." (Impressionist New York, New York, 1994, p. 46)
1890 was an important year for Hassam, as his art began to attract much favorable critical attention. At this time he was also elected to numerous art organizations, including the Society of American Artists, The Players and the American Watercolor Society, and he continued to exhibit works at the Paris Salon. During the summer of 1890 Hassam also began his celebrated series of "poppy" landscapes on Appledore Island on the Isle of Shoals.
Hassam has selected a viewpoint for Lower Fifth Avenue that looks southward at Fourteenth Street down the avenue toward Washington Square Park. Brownstone facades line the street at left, and the bold silhouette of the tower of the First Presbyterian Church at Twelfth Street dominates the center and background of the composition. The church was built in 1845 in the gothic revival style after plans by Joseph C. Wells. Also visible at right further down Fifth Avenue at Tenth Street is the tower of the Church of the Ascension, designed in 1840-41 by Richard Upjohn, the master gothic revival architect who also designed Trinity Church, Wall Street. In 1888, two years before Hassam painted Lower Fifth Avenue, the interior of the Church of the Ascension was remodeled by the architect Stanford White, and a mural by John LaFarge was installed above the altar.
Hassam has painted lower Fifth Avenue in an afternoon light that falls across the scene and creates a brilliant backlit compostion, drawing deep shadows toward the viewer. The surface of the canvas is animated with lively touches of color--a particularly effective device used by Hassam for depicting the movement of the traffic and pedestrians in the middleground.
During the early 1890s the artist developed a unique approach to painting street scenes. In an interview in 1892 with A.E. Ives, Hassam said, "Good art is, first of all, true. If you looked down a street and saw at one glance a moving throng of people, say fifty or one hundred feet away, it would not be true that you would see the details of their features or dress. Any one who paints a scene of that sort, and gives you such details, is not painting from the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. The word 'impression' as applied to art has been abused, and in general acceptance of the term has become perverted . . . The true impression is realism."
He continued, "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." (Hassam to A.E. Ives, "Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes," Art Amateur, vol. 27, October 1892, pp. 116-17)
Lower Fifth Avenue was renowned as a civilized and elegant district within a city that was undergoing rapid--and at times uncontrolled-- expansion. Contemporary commentators described its unique beauty as one of the few remaining bastions of old New York. In 1891 R.H. Titherington wrote, "Cut off from the residential district to the northward by the river of traffic that flows along Fourteenth Street, the lower end of Fifth Avenue forms a picturesque oasis, where the aristocratic air of old Knickerbocker stateliness lingers amid a commonplace environment. The six blocks between Washington Square and Thirteenth Street are a unique corner of New York. Their architecture is that of a generation that has now passed away . . . Roomy and well proportioned structures of red brick, they have a simple dignity that is far more impressive and pleasant than the showiness of many more ambitious and elaborate products of the modern builder. The trees that line the street, and the greenery of Washington Square, help to make this one of the most picturesque points of Fifth Avenue." ("Picturesque Points of Fifth," Munsey's Magazine, vol. 6, November 1891, pp. 125-126)
This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.
Hassam's fascination with New York has been the subject of considerable scholarship. Dr. William H. Gerdts has written, "Fifth Avenue attracted Childe Hassam almost immediately after he settled in New York in late 1889, and by 1919 it was noted that he 'has been Fifth Avenue's historian for years.' . . . Much of Hassam's painting, especially at this period in his career, was devoted to expressing traditional American subjects and values in the most modern of aesthetics, and his New York scenes are no exception." (Impressionist New York, New York, 1994, p. 46)
1890 was an important year for Hassam, as his art began to attract much favorable critical attention. At this time he was also elected to numerous art organizations, including the Society of American Artists, The Players and the American Watercolor Society, and he continued to exhibit works at the Paris Salon. During the summer of 1890 Hassam also began his celebrated series of "poppy" landscapes on Appledore Island on the Isle of Shoals.
Hassam has selected a viewpoint for Lower Fifth Avenue that looks southward at Fourteenth Street down the avenue toward Washington Square Park. Brownstone facades line the street at left, and the bold silhouette of the tower of the First Presbyterian Church at Twelfth Street dominates the center and background of the composition. The church was built in 1845 in the gothic revival style after plans by Joseph C. Wells. Also visible at right further down Fifth Avenue at Tenth Street is the tower of the Church of the Ascension, designed in 1840-41 by Richard Upjohn, the master gothic revival architect who also designed Trinity Church, Wall Street. In 1888, two years before Hassam painted Lower Fifth Avenue, the interior of the Church of the Ascension was remodeled by the architect Stanford White, and a mural by John LaFarge was installed above the altar.
Hassam has painted lower Fifth Avenue in an afternoon light that falls across the scene and creates a brilliant backlit compostion, drawing deep shadows toward the viewer. The surface of the canvas is animated with lively touches of color--a particularly effective device used by Hassam for depicting the movement of the traffic and pedestrians in the middleground.
During the early 1890s the artist developed a unique approach to painting street scenes. In an interview in 1892 with A.E. Ives, Hassam said, "Good art is, first of all, true. If you looked down a street and saw at one glance a moving throng of people, say fifty or one hundred feet away, it would not be true that you would see the details of their features or dress. Any one who paints a scene of that sort, and gives you such details, is not painting from the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. The word 'impression' as applied to art has been abused, and in general acceptance of the term has become perverted . . . The true impression is realism."
He continued, "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." (Hassam to A.E. Ives, "Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes," Art Amateur, vol. 27, October 1892, pp. 116-17)
Lower Fifth Avenue was renowned as a civilized and elegant district within a city that was undergoing rapid--and at times uncontrolled-- expansion. Contemporary commentators described its unique beauty as one of the few remaining bastions of old New York. In 1891 R.H. Titherington wrote, "Cut off from the residential district to the northward by the river of traffic that flows along Fourteenth Street, the lower end of Fifth Avenue forms a picturesque oasis, where the aristocratic air of old Knickerbocker stateliness lingers amid a commonplace environment. The six blocks between Washington Square and Thirteenth Street are a unique corner of New York. Their architecture is that of a generation that has now passed away . . . Roomy and well proportioned structures of red brick, they have a simple dignity that is far more impressive and pleasant than the showiness of many more ambitious and elaborate products of the modern builder. The trees that line the street, and the greenery of Washington Square, help to make this one of the most picturesque points of Fifth Avenue." ("Picturesque Points of Fifth," Munsey's Magazine, vol. 6, November 1891, pp. 125-126)
This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.