Childe Hassam — Cliff Rock: Appledore, 1903.
Painting: oil on canvas, 29 x 36 in.. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana.
Childe Hassam’s art is arguably the purest example of the American Impressionist movement. Like many of his contemporaries (Mary Cassatt; William Merritt Chase; Thomas Wilmer Dewing; John Singer Sargent; Edmund Charles Tarbell) Hassam studied in Paris, where he gained first-hand exposure to Impressionism.
After returning to the United States, Hassam spent his summers painting along the Atlantic seaboard. Over the course of two decades he returned to the rocky shores of Appledore, one of nine islands comprising the Isles of the Shoals off the Maine coast. With its broken brushwork, craggy shore, and broad expanse of sea, Cliff Rock: Appledore exudes the same spirit as Monet’s coastal scenes of the mid-1880s. Hassam displays a confident, free handling, varying his brushwork from the loose treatment of the sun bleached rocks, to the overlapping strokes and vibrant hues of the foreground water, to the more even texture and tone of the distant horizon. The sturdy sense of volume Hassam achieves in the rock typifies the solidity and realism of American Impressionism. Source: Indianapolis Museum of Art
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Originally published on Art of Darkness: Daily Art Blog
