ar ys. * oY vat i 2 = i > = > ? - - ’ ‘ > 4 * = ca ~ . = =_ ) a ~ »- z 1 EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS by CHILDE HASSAM OPENING January 25, 1926 HOUSE OF DURAND-RUEL 12 EAST 57TH STREET NEW YORK CITY “= ¥ s : ' hy 1 $ ‘ ’ é . ; F M . . \ : ; P J 4 { -CHILDE HASSAM IN RETROSPECT HE House of Durand-Ruel has rarely exhibited Americans. That their choice should now fall on Childe Hassam 1s natural, for no American painter more consistently and ably represents that tradition of impressionism for which the house has ever valiantly done battle. Childe Hassam’s pictures seem sufficiently at home on walls where we are accus- tomed to seeing Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Renoir. The earliest pictures are Breis20, the latest is of. last year. In 1892, Childe Hassam, thirty- three years old, received the most coveted international award of the moment, the gold medal at Munich. Three years earlier he had been a medallist of the Salon, beginning of professional honors, that have only slackened when there were no more [5] to win. Except John Sargent, no other American painter has been so frequently and highly honored by his fellow artists. Such tributes properly go to virtuosity. It was so in Sar- gent’s case; it 1s so in Hassam’s. My delicate task is that of disengaging the artist from the virtuoso. For virtuosity is a mask. You get the essential artist, the man of thought and feeling behind the virtuoso, only in moments when disarmed by won- der or devotion he forgets his skill and himself as skilful. Whoever has seen Pachmann sink himself in Chopin knows what I mean. Great thinkers among artists have studied this dilem- ma of virtuosity, arriving at the formula that the artist is most fortu- nate whose skill is ever a little below what he has to say. Such is the mean- ing of Leonardo’s profound saying that “the judgment should surpass the work.” Evidently the virtuoso is de- [6] nied this ideal condition of an ascend- ing but never fulfilled endeavor. His skill is habitually in excess of what he has to say, and we get him at his best when work and judgment are in exact equilibrium. It is the quest and dis- covery of these moments that has kept vivid my interest and curiosity towards Hassam’s work despite its apparently uniform skill. We come near his beginnings 1n a little oil study of himself in his studio and in a café scene in gouache, both of 1892. Already Hassam had had the sound executive discipline of maga- zine illustration in the golden years of that genre in America. Who his early masters were in Boston and NewYork, he does not tell us. Probably he owed little to them. We see, however, in ~ the little studio interior that he had well mastered the unctuous and som- bre harmonies which we associate with Chase, Carolus and Duveneck, Ee | while in the café scene, crisp and blondly bleak and characterful, his interest is already turned to the new problems of natural illumination. The little watercolor is prophetic. One has only to enrich its simple, well-balanced surfaces with the new devices of broken color to find the Hassam we all know. In adopting the new technique, he avoided the ex- tremes of the luminist point of view. Sensitively curious of effects of light, he paints not illumination in the ab- stract, but illuminated objects, retain- ing, against the vogue for sheer irra- diation, the habit of fine descriptive draughtsmanship. We have a very accomplished example of the new manner in the large nocturne of 1898, withsoftly glowing paper lanterns,pale green and orange red,—mysterious luminaries before which stands both gently and sharply a girl’s slight form. The picture has the double charm of [8 ] being a careful invention in the vein of Sargent’s famous fantasia while keeping the unexpectedness of a mere discovery. The decorative quality of the design again forecasts a merit which was to be a saving grace of much painting that otherwise might have seemed merely dextrous. This was about the moment of the little marines from the Isles of Shoals; still, in my opinion, Hassam’s masterpieces is the vein of naturalistic luminism. I miss them in this show, though we have a technical equivalent in two later and more sophisticated sea pieces with nude figures. For the creator of this nocturne and of the Appledore marines the notation of light could have few difficulties in _ reserve. Hassam could followthe light where it led, noting as readily the looming of sierras beyond mist veils, the subtle dapplings anddiscolorations of the nude in the universal light or eo") the confined and variously reflected light of wood or house interior, the rising of white towns beyond steely blue harbors bearing white sails lightly, the snapping polychromy of war flags above crowded avenues, the proud upthrust of sky-scrapers from huddles of old roofs and gables. The just reasons for Hassam’s admitted primacy among our painters of impressionist tendency should now be clear. He came early to novel tasks congenial to his own spiritand interesting to the enlightened public. By thoroughly mastering his task, he attained a specialist’s prestige, for the good reason that his numer- ous competitors in an increasingly crowded specialty did the task less well than he. Indeed, even in the aspect that transcends professional- ism, I think of only Twachtman and Alden Weiras habitually putting more artistry into work of this sort. Among [10] the host of competent American impressionists, Childe Hassam stands forth as much by reason of his occa- sional rare artistry as by reason of his unflagging virtuosity. To the discriminating visitor I leave the rewarding task of catching the virtuoso off his guard, recording only a few discoveries of my own. I think that Hassam is most the artist when impelled by emotions antedating pro- fessional interests. Imagine the long thoughts of a Boston lad of most sen- sitive vision who found in the homely picturesqueness of old Boston and the North Shore towns, in their dignity and slightly shabby dearness, the key to this kind of charm everywhere. You have the full quality of the feel- ing in the alien, spectral sky-scraper reconciled with environing old roofs by densely falling snow; you have had it in earlier scenes of Paris and New York which are vivid to me after a [11] generation; you have it in the paint- ing about Lyme, in the etchings of old Portsmouth and Easthampton; you have the emotion in consummate epitome in the watercolor drawing, “Court Street, Portsmouth.” Merely for its mastery of concise indication I should like to see it hung between the most summary and hand- some Marin and Cézanne that could be found. More important is the sense it yields instantaneously of a lovable old mansion in its tranquil setting. Here for me is the essential and im- portant artist, but as I close the form- ula there come before me surprises in work that usually reaches only a cold sort of approval within me. I am thinking of a singular nobility in what is superficially considered only one of many experiments of the nude in in- terior light. “Against the Light” is the title, suggesting only an experimental intention. How near it is to the old [12] Beaux-arts nobility, yet with what a saving difference! I can’t explain it, but I feel it, and it reminds me that even the most reasonable formulas hardly cover any considerable talent, much less can they cover those happy episodes when a great talent unex- pectedly becomes genius. FRANK JEWETT MATHER, JR. New York, January 11, 1926 Dear Hassam: I feel that in your coming exhibition at Durand- Ruel’s, having had the privilege of seeing your as- sembled work that is to be shown, the words of the great French artist’ America has had a Renaissance in Art as great as that of the Italian Renaissance only the American people do not know it yet,” will be verified, and I trust that the exhibition will open American eyes to the truth expressed by the French artist. To me the artist’s words seem very true, but I feel to go further than he did, for somehow the fresh- ness, originality, beauty and purity in the work of the great group of our artists in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and the surviving membersof that group until the present time, would lead one back through the centuries to the clear beauty in Greek Art. [13] The Italian Renaissance was burdened with deco- ration, the American Renaissance portrays nature and has more of the beautiful simplicity of the Greek. It seems to me that no painter’s brush has more truly met the command recorded in the Book of Genesis “Let there be light” than yours. This you have done with truth and charm and poetry, and I think that you, who are perhaps the youngest of the group, will always be remembered as among the great and leading men honored by the French artist’s words. You have expressed yourself so well in the pictures shimmering with light and poetic truth, and I realize that your skill in handling enduring color assures a permanence in beauty that will endure for as long time as have the masterpieces of the fifteenth century. Believe me with keen appreciation and true ad- miration, Very sincerely yours, Joun GELLATLY Childe Hassam est tout naturellement peintre color- iste comme il n’y en a peu, sa facture vous donne toujours de la belle matiére, soit des lavis mince de couleur ou une pate solide. Son dessin comme tous les maitres coule de source c’est de l’inspiration de la lumiére, combiné avec une variété de composition sans egale, il est surement de son temps un moderne un des maitres modernes. Que l’on regarde ses oeuvres a Vhuile, 4 eau au pastel, eau forte ou dessin c’est toujours Hassam un luministe. LE Cog DE LAUTREPPE [ édité par P.V.V.] [14] . PAINTINGS EXHIBITION . The New York Winter Window 48% x 58 — 1919 . Looking into the Little South Room, East Hampton 488. x 584% — 1917 3. The Portrait and the Bust 37 % x 413% — 1920 4. The Opal 35q5 x 1834 — 1905 5. The Room of Flowers 343% x 3434 — 1894 Celia Thaxter’s salon at Appledore, Isles of Shoals. A room filled with flowers and most everything else, from a Grand Rapids rocking chair to the most ex- quisite Venetian glass vases and period pieces of Colonial furniture. . Against the Light 39% x 22% — 1916 . Miss Ingram Reading a Letter 32% x 195 — 1913 . The Sun Room 57% x 44 — 1999 9. Posilippo 2534 x 203 — 1897 10. Naples 25% x 3034 — 1897 11. Vesuvius 25% x 3034 — 1897 [16] 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. By fe 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. Phryne 13% x 13834 — 1912 Portrait in the Park 13 x 15 — 1890 Portrait Out of Doors, Miss W. 38% x 38 — 1909 Portrait at a New York Window 36% x 25% — 1921 Gloucester 245% x 22% — 1899 Pierce’s Stable | 29% x 23% — 1900 Low wooden buildings that extended at the time on 7th Avenue and 58th Street. July Night 37% x 31,8, — 1898 The Purple Trail (Motor Parkway, Long Island) 21% x 304% — 1925 The Beyrl Pool 24% x 20% — 1912 The Window at Appledore 30 x 33% — 1910 June 26th, Old Lyme 31% x 25% — 1912 Portrait of Mrs. Hassam in the South East room at Miss Florence’s, Old Lyme, on her birthday in June. The flowers in their prime on this date are the Mountain Laurel—Kalmia. Peter Kalm thought it the most beautiful of North American flowers. [a7 23. The Flower Shop 36% x 28% — 1893 At the apex of where the Flatiron Building now stands there was a little flower shop that one could step across in a few strides from Fifth Avenue to Broadway. Broadway is seen through the window with the sign lettering reversed on the window glass. 24. Pomona in the Rose Bower 27% x 19% — 1919 25. The Beyrl Gorge 241 x 20% — 1912 26. Self Portrait 16 x 123 — 1898 [18] ree o t - ‘ ‘ » ‘ ¥ ‘ - fi Die