Lot Essay
RELATED LITERATURE
A. E. Ives, "Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes," Art Amateur, 27, Oct. 1892, p. 116
Hassam had shown an interest in the urban scene as subject matter beginning with his work in Boston in the mid-1880s. Usually large, Tonalist, they were pictures painted in close-keyed tones. In 1886, he made his second trip abroad, and during the three year that he spent in Paris, he had become "converted" to Impressionism. In 1889, he settled in New York, with a home at Fifth Avenue and 17th Street. His foremost passion at this time was depicting life on the fahionable streets of the city, and he became the most prominent artistic interpreter of the urban New York scene.
Hassam felt that contemporary life was his true subject. In an interview in 1892, he said, "The man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and scenes of everday life around him." (Hassam in Ives, p. 116). Hassam took his work very serioriusly, often painting from a hansom cab or actually standing on the street with a sketchbook. He would incorporate these carefully notated motifs and create a composition which is a blend of realism and personal sentiment.
Horse Drawn Cabs at Evening, New York (executed circa 1890) is a perfect example of the poetry Hassam could create out of the urban scene. The artist, in a single composition, captures so much of the city life: the mother and daughter walking on the left, the elegant top-hatted hansom cab drivers, the horses face to face, the shimmering lights of the storefronts, the flickering of the street lamps, and the shadowy building rising in the background. There is no sign of the lower classes, no squalor. There is a great concentration on the figures and the vehicles, and the overall effect is calm and harmony. The influence of the French Impressionists is evident in the general loosening of the composition, the broadening of the brushstroke and the lightening of the palette. The greys and the browns of the Tonalist period are still evident, but the palette has been enlivened by orange and yellow, while the greys have been lightened to lavender and blue.
This watercolor will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.
A. E. Ives, "Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes," Art Amateur, 27, Oct. 1892, p. 116
Hassam had shown an interest in the urban scene as subject matter beginning with his work in Boston in the mid-1880s. Usually large, Tonalist, they were pictures painted in close-keyed tones. In 1886, he made his second trip abroad, and during the three year that he spent in Paris, he had become "converted" to Impressionism. In 1889, he settled in New York, with a home at Fifth Avenue and 17th Street. His foremost passion at this time was depicting life on the fahionable streets of the city, and he became the most prominent artistic interpreter of the urban New York scene.
Hassam felt that contemporary life was his true subject. In an interview in 1892, he said, "The man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and scenes of everday life around him." (Hassam in Ives, p. 116). Hassam took his work very serioriusly, often painting from a hansom cab or actually standing on the street with a sketchbook. He would incorporate these carefully notated motifs and create a composition which is a blend of realism and personal sentiment.
Horse Drawn Cabs at Evening, New York (executed circa 1890) is a perfect example of the poetry Hassam could create out of the urban scene. The artist, in a single composition, captures so much of the city life: the mother and daughter walking on the left, the elegant top-hatted hansom cab drivers, the horses face to face, the shimmering lights of the storefronts, the flickering of the street lamps, and the shadowy building rising in the background. There is no sign of the lower classes, no squalor. There is a great concentration on the figures and the vehicles, and the overall effect is calm and harmony. The influence of the French Impressionists is evident in the general loosening of the composition, the broadening of the brushstroke and the lightening of the palette. The greys and the browns of the Tonalist period are still evident, but the palette has been enlivened by orange and yellow, while the greys have been lightened to lavender and blue.
This watercolor will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.