Childe Hassam 1859-1935

American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, 1935 (bequest of the artist)
The Milch Galleries, New York
John Fox, Boston, Massachusetts
Babcock Galleries, New York
Meredith Long and Company, Houston, Texas
Esther F. Goodrich, Houston, Texas
Goodrich Foundation, Houston, Texas
Ted Bensinger III (sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, October 27, 1977, lot 57, illustrated in color)
Brand Gallery (acquired at the above sale)
Coe Kerr Galleries, New York
Terry DeLapp Galleries, Los Angeles, California
Private Collection, Texas
Sale: Christie's, New York May 29, 1987, lot 203, illustrated in color
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

New York, Babcock Galleries, Childe Hassam, 1960, no. 16

The Toll Bridge, Near Exeter, New Hampshire, painted in 1906, elegantly illustrates Hassam’s technique at the turn-of-the-century in which he favored impressionistic brushstrokes of subtle tonal variations over perspective and line. As Jay Cantor notes, the artist’s “increasing attention to surface qualities and expressive content became the vehicle for Hassam’s transition from nineteenth- to twentieth-century modernism, and it is evident in both the style and choice of subjects that he made after the turn of the century” (“Hassam’s Twentieth Century Work,” Childe Hassam, Impressionist, New York, 1999, p. 78).   By this time, Hassam was growing increasingly tired of the bustling pace of the city, even stating “I don’t know that I wish a very large dose of New York for any of my friends” (Ulrich Hiesinger, Childe Hassam, New York, 1994,  p. 131).  Instead, he spent much of the year traveling between the artistic communities of Gloucester, Isle of Shoals and New London and New Lyme, Connecticut.  These locales lent themselves to Hassam’s increased sensitivity to the effects of light and changes in atmosphere and many of his paintings of this period are landscapes set in and around New England.  Ulrich Hiesinger writes that in these landscapes the “artist’s mosaic like patterning produces not the atmospheric quality of a soft continuous dissolve but a fracturing of space through the alternation of light and shade…Hassam oscillated between these alternatives of illusion and decoration, occasionally abandoning space for strong, tapestry like effects” (Childe Hassam, p. 115).  In The Toll Bridge, Near Exeter, New Hampshire, probably painted en route to one of Hassam’s frequent destinations, the reflection of the bridge in the water is suggested by the interplay between red, white and blue accents of color applied in quick, dynamic brushstrokes.  The materiality of the paint is enforced to create a decorative, almost tactile surface that simultaneously emphasizes the flatness of the canvas and renders skilled and subtle atmospheric effects.