CHILDE HASSAM, Rainy Day on the Avenue

In 1889, Hassam returned to the United States after a three year sojourn abroad and settled in New York, where he continued to draw upon the urban landscape and its fashionable inhabitants for subject matter, themes he had already explored in his early tonalist works in Boston and his Montmartre scenes in Paris.   While his chosen subjects- city scenes of elegant women and horse drawn carriages- mostly remained the same, Hassam became particularly adept at conveying the environment in all kinds of light and weather. His brushwork became looser and more staccato, with a more vibrant energy that had not been present in his earlier work.  Barbara Weinberg writes of Hassam’s return to New York, “No other American city could have better stimulated the repatriation of his Parisian imagery…New York more than any other American city compelled the use of Impressionist devices to convey its spirit” (Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, New York, 2004, p. 90).

William Gerdts writes, the “theme that engaged Hassam during his early years in New York was pedestrians on the streets, again often in inclement weather.  Sometimes he depicted the ‘passing parade,’ but he also painted many smaller pictures of only one or two figures on the streets…This emphasis on the individual pedestrian was prefigured by a number of his smaller Parisan works,…in which an elegantly garbed lady carefully makes her way across a wet street…These smaller works are almost always of lovely, elegantly garbed  ladies, rendered in bright hues-in contrast to the dark, masculine world of the cab drivers.  Such scenes are often difficult or impossible to locate precisely” (Childe Hassam, Impressionist, New York, 1999, pp. 147-148). 

In Rainy Day on the Avenue, dated 1893, Hassam captures a fashionable woman, framed by her tilted black umbrella, as she crosses the wet, slick avenue.  Horse drawn carriages fill the wide, tree lined road.   The strong diagonal cut by the avenue, and emphasized by the trolley tracks which trace parallel lines in the street, leads the viewer to the off-center vanishing point.  Hassam had no doubt absorbed this dynamic use of perspective through the Parisian cityscapes of Caillebotte and Monet and he had already used this device to great effect in his earlier work.  Once in New York, Hassam built upon his experience abroad, exploring his familiar subjects with a new, more impressionistic technique of short, flickering brushstrokes and soft hues.