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Lot Essay
The picturesque scenery of New England attracted many artists throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Childe Hassam was part of this group and throughout his career drew inspiration from its varied landscapes. Spring in White Mountains from 1930 is an ambitious canvas that illustrates the hallmarks of his mature painting style and moreover, reveals the artist's reverence towards and close connection with New England.
Childe Hassam was a native New Englander and traveled frequently around Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. "Play was important to the gregarious Hassam, but work governed his New England sojourns. He seems never to have visited a place solely for vacation; instead, recreation and companionship complemented days of productive activity. Above all, Hassam sought subject matter in New England. Ignoring, for the most part, evidence of change or modernity, he captured on his canvases picturesque villages, white-columned churches, old-fashioned gardens, demure women and rugged seacoasts. Such themes represented qualities Hassam cherished and struck a chord with potential collectors who discerned in them assurance of enduring values." (S.G. Larkin, "Hassam in New England, 1889-1918," Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, New York, 2004, p. 119) In the present work, Hassam captures with his stacatto brushwork the White Mountains and surroundings on a beautiful spring day. Utilizing an impressive format, he chooses a slightly elevated and distant viewpoint to create a sweeping, panoramic view.
Hassam's painting style later in his career focused more on the effects of color heightened by exaggerated brushwork. Donelson Hoopes remarks, "The brilliant surface manipulation of pigment that is the prominent characteristic of the Flag Series paintings of 1916 to 1918 was an intermediate step to Hassam's late stylistic development away from realism toward a much more decorative use of color than he had ever before employed...Hassam's postwar landscape paintings partake of this new-found freedom to experiment with color. Unlike his earlier works, these pictures do not seek to approximate light of nature in an 'optically correct' way. Often his palette was set in an extremely high tonal key. In this arbitrary disregard for naturalism, Hassam displayed a pronounced attachment to color for its own sake, which when combined with the broad, mannered brushwork, renders the painting an object in its own right more than a picture of something in nature." (Childe Hassam, New York, 1988, p. 84) Spring in White Mountains is composed of varying swatches and strokes of brilliant greens, blues and reds transforming a formal recording of a New England landscape into an explosion of color, texture and light.
The origin of Hassam's light palette and interest in the theme of landscape coincided with his extended stay in France from 1886 to 1889, a period during which he closely studied and adopted aspects of the Impressionist technique, approach and choice of subject matter that he molded to suit his own aesthetic objectives. Hassam moved to Paris with the intent of "refining his talent in the larger crucible of contemporary art." (Childe Hassam, p. 13) While in Paris, Hassam studied at the Academie Julian though his experience at the school was neither favorable nor beneficial to his art. Hassam wrote: "The Julian Academy is the personification of routine...It is nonsense. It crushes all originality out of the growing men." (as quoted in U. Hiesinger, Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, New York, 1994, p. 32) Working independently of the Academie, Hassam learned his most important artistic lessons on his own.
Hassam absorbed various tenets of Impressionism, shifting away from the more static approach and darker palette evident in his works from his earlier Boston period. Although Hassam began to focus on bright light and adopted short quick brushstrokes, he consistently rejected the classification of Impressionist. Mr. Hoopes writes, "If the search for the equivalent in paint of the light of nature involved borrowing some of the Impressionists' innovations, then he borrowed, but at no time in his career did Hassam subordinate the emotional content of the represented image to a supremacy of color or technique." (Childe Hassam, p. 13)
Hassam did not believe in depicting landscapes exactly as they were in nature, rather he preferred to model them to his compositional vision. "The definition so often given of the work of modern painters in landscape--which is, that they take a motif anywhere, as if looking out of an open window, and painting it just as they see it--is partly erroneous, only a half truth. These painters do try to give you frankly the aspect of the thing seen in its fundamental and essential truths: but that they do not place things as they feel they should be placed to get the balance and beauty of the whole, well seen within the frame, is a mistaken idea." (Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p.131)
Spring in White Mountains, with its highly developed, patterned surface, serves as a superlative example of Hassam's landscapes from this period and conveys the full vision of Hassam's lively impressionist style. The tranquility and serenity of this spring landscape is poignantly recorded, and he successfully creates an idyllic image that embraces the landscape in its most beautiful and picturesque form.
This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.
Childe Hassam was a native New Englander and traveled frequently around Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. "Play was important to the gregarious Hassam, but work governed his New England sojourns. He seems never to have visited a place solely for vacation; instead, recreation and companionship complemented days of productive activity. Above all, Hassam sought subject matter in New England. Ignoring, for the most part, evidence of change or modernity, he captured on his canvases picturesque villages, white-columned churches, old-fashioned gardens, demure women and rugged seacoasts. Such themes represented qualities Hassam cherished and struck a chord with potential collectors who discerned in them assurance of enduring values." (S.G. Larkin, "Hassam in New England, 1889-1918," Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, New York, 2004, p. 119) In the present work, Hassam captures with his stacatto brushwork the White Mountains and surroundings on a beautiful spring day. Utilizing an impressive format, he chooses a slightly elevated and distant viewpoint to create a sweeping, panoramic view.
Hassam's painting style later in his career focused more on the effects of color heightened by exaggerated brushwork. Donelson Hoopes remarks, "The brilliant surface manipulation of pigment that is the prominent characteristic of the Flag Series paintings of 1916 to 1918 was an intermediate step to Hassam's late stylistic development away from realism toward a much more decorative use of color than he had ever before employed...Hassam's postwar landscape paintings partake of this new-found freedom to experiment with color. Unlike his earlier works, these pictures do not seek to approximate light of nature in an 'optically correct' way. Often his palette was set in an extremely high tonal key. In this arbitrary disregard for naturalism, Hassam displayed a pronounced attachment to color for its own sake, which when combined with the broad, mannered brushwork, renders the painting an object in its own right more than a picture of something in nature." (Childe Hassam, New York, 1988, p. 84) Spring in White Mountains is composed of varying swatches and strokes of brilliant greens, blues and reds transforming a formal recording of a New England landscape into an explosion of color, texture and light.
The origin of Hassam's light palette and interest in the theme of landscape coincided with his extended stay in France from 1886 to 1889, a period during which he closely studied and adopted aspects of the Impressionist technique, approach and choice of subject matter that he molded to suit his own aesthetic objectives. Hassam moved to Paris with the intent of "refining his talent in the larger crucible of contemporary art." (Childe Hassam, p. 13) While in Paris, Hassam studied at the Academie Julian though his experience at the school was neither favorable nor beneficial to his art. Hassam wrote: "The Julian Academy is the personification of routine...It is nonsense. It crushes all originality out of the growing men." (as quoted in U. Hiesinger, Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, New York, 1994, p. 32) Working independently of the Academie, Hassam learned his most important artistic lessons on his own.
Hassam absorbed various tenets of Impressionism, shifting away from the more static approach and darker palette evident in his works from his earlier Boston period. Although Hassam began to focus on bright light and adopted short quick brushstrokes, he consistently rejected the classification of Impressionist. Mr. Hoopes writes, "If the search for the equivalent in paint of the light of nature involved borrowing some of the Impressionists' innovations, then he borrowed, but at no time in his career did Hassam subordinate the emotional content of the represented image to a supremacy of color or technique." (Childe Hassam, p. 13)
Hassam did not believe in depicting landscapes exactly as they were in nature, rather he preferred to model them to his compositional vision. "The definition so often given of the work of modern painters in landscape--which is, that they take a motif anywhere, as if looking out of an open window, and painting it just as they see it--is partly erroneous, only a half truth. These painters do try to give you frankly the aspect of the thing seen in its fundamental and essential truths: but that they do not place things as they feel they should be placed to get the balance and beauty of the whole, well seen within the frame, is a mistaken idea." (Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p.131)
Spring in White Mountains, with its highly developed, patterned surface, serves as a superlative example of Hassam's landscapes from this period and conveys the full vision of Hassam's lively impressionist style. The tranquility and serenity of this spring landscape is poignantly recorded, and he successfully creates an idyllic image that embraces the landscape in its most beautiful and picturesque form.
This painting will be included in Stuart P. Feld's and Kathleen M. Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.