Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935) was born in Dorchester, MA. His father owned a cutlery business and a collection of antiques and art. Hassam took his first art lessons while attending the Mather Elementary School, the oldest public elementary school in North America. In his first art job as a draftsman at Little Brown & Company he designed commercial engravings, letterheads, and newspapers. He also expanded his skills, painting outdoor scenes at first in watercolors and then in oils. He established his own studio in 1882. He illustrated children’s stories for Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s Monthly, and The Century. He took drawing classes at Lowell Institute and the Boston Art Club. He traveled to Europe to study classical and contemporary art as so many young artists did. He was drawn to the Barbizon artists and the Impressionists who were working in plein air with the emphasis on depiction of atmosphere and light.
Hassam won a bronze medal at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. American artists Innes, Whistler, and Sargeant also were represented there. Hassam wrote: “The American Section has convinced me forever of the capability of Americans to claim a school…An artist should paint his own time and treat nature as he feels it, not repeat the same stupidities of his predecessors. The men who have made success today are the men who got out of the rut…it was what I was trying to do myself.”
A feast honoring the French Republic was held on June 30, 1878, to celebrate peace, national pride, and recovery after the Franco Prussian war of 1870. The event was part of the Universal Exposition of 1878. French Impressionist artist Claude Monet made a painting Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Festival of 30 June 1878 (32”x20”) (Musee d’Orsay, Paris). The French tricolor flies above the crowds celebrating in the street. The painting is one of two that Monet made in 1878. The twin was The Rue Saint-Denis, Celebration of June 30, 1878.
A semi-official event had been held on July 14. In 1880, the French Third Republic decided to establish an official holiday. After much discussion and disagreement, the official holiday was established and named Bastille Day to celebrate the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, initiating the French Revolution.
Hassam and his wife traveled to and lived in Boston, New York, and Paris several times during his career. Modern life on famous streets in these cities in different seasons and times of day are major themes. Returning to Paris in 1910, he painted from the balcony of his hotel July Fourteenth, Rue Daunou (1910) (29”x20”) (Metropolitan Museum, NY). Rue Daunou is near the Paris Opera House. He wrote to a friend, “The town is all torn up like New York. Much building going on. They out American the Americans!”
Of English ancestry, Hassam was a patriotic American, but also a Francophile. When World War I broke out, he wanted to volunteer, but America was still an isolationist nation. The French Bastille Day celebration inspired him to make what is known as his flag series, 30 paintings made from 1916 until 1919. He commented, “I looked up the Avenue and saw those wonderful flags waving, and I painted a series of flag pictures after that.” The Fourth of July, 1916 (The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of the Preparedness Parade in May) (36”x26”) (New York Historical Society) was painted before America entered World War II. Hassam was a supporter of the Preparedness Movement that began in 1914.
Flags on the Waldorf (1916) (36”x26”) (Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas) is a depiction of New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The red-brick structure occupied an entire city block. The white colonnaded structure in the painting could be the New York Public Library or one of the other colonnaded structures on 5th Avenue. The Waldorf-Astoria was demolished in 1929 and replaced by the Empire State Building.
Allies Day (1917) (36”x30”) (National Gallery of Art, DC) is a depiction of flags along 5th Avenue, but in the painting they commemorate America’s entry into World War I in the Spring of 1917. America had entered a military alliance with Great Britain and France. The British Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, and the French Tricolor were displayed along the Avenue. Hassam dedicated the painting “to the coming together of [our] three peoples in the fight for democracy.”
Hassam’s The Avenue in the Rain (1917) (32”x22”) has been in the collection of the White House since the Kennedy administration. The blurred effect creates a sense that the scene is viewed through a window. During the Presidency of Barack Obama, the painting hung on the wall between two windows in the Oval Office.
New York City’s Fifth Avenue was officially designated the Avenue of the Allies for the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive in 1918. This three- block view is north from 53rd Street. The Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain (1918) (36”x28’’) (Metropolitan Museum, NY) includes the flags of Canada (containing the Union Jack), Brazil (yellow diamond on green with blue disc), Belgium tricolor (black, yellow, red), and banners promoting Liberty Bonds. The installation covered the Avenue from 24th to 58th street, each block devoted to an Allied country.
Happy 250th!
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Hassan, back in the US after studying in Paris, was a member of ‘The Ten’: a group of renegade American post impressionists who were refusing to bow to the American art establishment. My great grandfather was also in that group and a fried of Hassan’s. Edward Emerson Simmons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Simmons_(painter)). Lesser known because of his focus on large murals for wealthy and government patrons, but a huge body of work, none the less. Check him out. First American to win the French gold medal, I believe.
He created beautiful canvases!