Childe Hassam, American Impressionist

Rating:
Summary: A MEMORABLE IMPRESSIONIST
Review:



While many books have been published featuring the work of famed American Impressionist Childe Hassam, few offer such stunning illustrations and none trace so completely the many years Hassam spent marketing his art. He lived the statement he made in 1892: "I believe the man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of every-day life around him."

Paint those scenes he did - who is not moved by his depictions of the red, white and blue flags and banners flying from the tallest buildings in New York City at the onset of World War I? It's clear that Hassam loved New York and painted it in all its many faces - summer, autumn, winter and spring.

The artist also spent a great deal of time in New England where he captured quaint villages and fabled East Hampton interiors. Adept at both urban and rural scenes, Hassam studied in Paris where, it's believed, he first became acquainted with the eye catching French Impressionism. He brought much of what he had learned to America, where he would become one of the most prolific practitioners of American Impressionism.

H. Barbara Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has done a superb job of selecting the 374 illustrations included in this luxe volume as well as penning engaging and informative accompanying texts.

"Childe Hassam: American Impressionist" will be treasured by not only art aficionados but by Americans as well as they come to realize the enormous contribution Hassam made to bolstering pride in our country.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: An essential addition to American Impressionist literature
Review: My feelings about this book mirror the feelings I had when I attended the exhibition this catalogue is drawn from. I had the pleasure of seeing the Childe Hassam retrospective in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2004; it was one of the few times that I have seen total strangers turn to one another at an exhibition this size and speak with each other about their mutual amazement for the artist's technique. I knew a bit about Impressionism, and a bit about American artists such as Whistler and Cassatt who were influenced by Impressionism. But I didn't know anything about Hassam. Who was this wonderful artist and why didn't my college courses in modern art teach me about him?

I wanted to learn as much as I could, and this book provided me with the answers to both questions. Childe Hassam was the essential link between the Impressionism of Paris and later American descendants of the genre. He was a proud and gifted man who, like most giants, contained giant-sized paradoxes. He steadfastly denied the influence of Monet while clearly celebrating that influence in his cityscapes. He championed the spirit of the growing spirit of New York City while denying its increasingly immigrant population. In the end, like so many greats, he was an anachronism and ignored by the younger avant-garde. After reading and rereading this immensively informative book, I had a good idea of both who Hassam was and why modern art scholars have trouble with his standing among his peers. He's a complicated person, but aren't all great artists?

The illustrations in this book, as you'd expect, are not only first rate but complete. We are treated not only to full-page accurately colored reproductions but also to many enlarged details of the same paintings. All the paintings from the exhibition along with many that were notare reproduced here,and several paintings by Monet and Degas are included for comparisons. The writing style is largely academic, but I think most of this book would be accessible to anyone who loves to read and isn't easily discouraged by long blocks of text. This isn't an oversized picture book, but an indepth examination of Hassam that places him in the context of the early 20th Century.

If you enjoy Impressionism and the roots of modern art, and you have a penchant for learning all you can about some of the relatively forgotten figures from that time, you will not only add this book to your collection but cherish it.