Paper on Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam has been a well-known American Impressionist artist in America and Europe. Called the “American Monet” Hassam was famous for his early illustrations, but more importantly his landscape paintings and large cityscapes. During the late 1890s Hassam began to paint nostalgic scenes of women that brought emotion from viewers. The piece chosen for this case study, Improvisations, is one of the first of these new scenes that Hassam painted. This creates an importance to this particular painting as it begins to create a shift in how Hassam painted through the rest of his career. Although he didn’t completely stop painting landscapes, there was a shift towards painting women in homes that were taking part in activities that only the wealthy would participate in. Throughout our study of art history this semester we have seen many ways of how women are depicted. Childe Hassam and his paintings are another way to explain this notion of womanhood. By understanding the activities the women in his scenes are taking part in and how they are depicted gives an insight into what many upper-class women did during this time and how they spent their days. By examining other pieces of Hassam’s work from this time there are a few generalizations that can be made. One in particular is the notion of music being an art. Art doesn’t have to only be represented by painting. By understanding this idea, it makes it easier to see that these women are doing more than just sitting around their homes waiting for their husbands to come home from work. Improvisations by Childe Hassam is a revolutionary piece of work that was created around the middle of his career. This impressionist style painting shows a young woman positioned at a piano in a beautifully decorated room. It appears as if this room is a part of a home because of the painting hanging on the wall and the various vases arranged on the table to the side of the piano. The fact that there is a piano in this