CHILDE HASSAM, Rue Montmartre, Paris

Private Collection
Acquired by the present owner from the above 

New York, A.C.A. Heritage Gallery, Childe Hassam, 1859-1935, November-December 1965
New York, Bernard Dannenberg Galleries, Childe Hassam, An Exhibition of His Flag Series, November 1968
Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Childe Hassam, February-March 1972, p. 67
Roslyn, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, William Cullen Bryant: The Weirs and American Impressionism, April-July, 1983, no. 10, pp. 27, 37, illustrated in color
New York, The Jordan-Volpe Gallery, Childe Hassam, May-July 1994
New York, Spanierman Gallery, Saratoga Spring Fine Art Exhibition, August 1999
New York, Spanierman Gallery, The Spirit of America: American Art from 1829 to 1970, November 2002-February 2003, no. 53, illustrated in color
Greenwich, Connecticut, Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences, American Impressionism: The Beauty of Work, September 2005-January 2006

Ulrich W. Hiesinger, Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, Munich, 1994, illustrated p. 33
Warren Adelson, Jay Cantor, William H. Gerdts, Childe Hassam: Impressionist, New York, 1999, pp. 175-76, illustrated in color p. 175
H. Barbara Weinberg, Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, New Haven, Connecticut, 2004, p. 310

In 1886, Childe Hassam traveled abroad for the second time, settling in Paris at the edge of the neighborhood Montmartre. The apartment, at 11 Boulevard Clichy, afforded a view of the city from the dining room and a vibrant, bohemian neighborhood below.  Hassam and his wife gravitated toward this avant-garde quartier, enjoying the fascinating characters and lively urban environment.  Barbara Weinberg writes, “Hassam’s Paris paintings disclose a bourgeois gentility that echoes his lifestyle and typifies the cheerful euphemism that helps define American Impressionism.  In them he assumed the role of flâneur, the archetypal urban observer described by Charles Baudelaire as a ‘passionate spectator’ for whom ‘it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude.’  Indeed, when Hassam was asked in 1927 what his ‘greatest amusement’ had been, he replied: ‘To go about Paris’” (Childe Hassam, American Impressionist, New Haven, Connecticut, 2004, p. 60).

Upon his arrival, Hassam enrolled at the Acadèmie Julian to study with Gustave Boulanger and Jules LeFebvre with the hopes of “refining his talent in the larger crucible of contemporary art” (Donaldson F. Hoopes, Childe Hassam, New York, 1982, p. 13).  Increasingly, Hassam found himself attracted to the most radical element in the French artistic community -the Impressionists- rather than the more traditional contingent of academic painters.  Hassam was particularly drawn towards the cityscapes of artists such as Claude Monet and Gustave Caillebotte and to the bustling city life their paintings recorded.  By the spring of 1888, Hassam abandoned the Acadèmie Julian altogether, stating, “The Julian Academy is the personification of routine.  It is nonsense” (Ulrich W. Hiesinger, Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, New York, p. 32).  

As Hassam found renewed inspiration in the quartiers of Paris, he also transitioned from his earlier, more traditional approach of the more tonalist Boston pictures to a fully realized Impressionist style. Rue Montmartre, Paris, painted circa 1888, captures a flower seller at the base of a narrow winding road in Montmartre and celebrates the vibrancy of Paris with its bold dashes of color and freedom of expression.  Barbara Weinberg writes, “Hassam’s Parisian works suggest that he was much more inclined than were most of his contemporaries to interpret in a personal and vital way the styles of the modern French painters—the artists of the juste-milieu, Impressionists, and Neoimpressionists—and to celebrate urban life.  He often brightened his palette, loosened his brushwork, and showed the effects of brilliant sunlight in oils and watercolors that record the spectacle of Paris” (Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p. 60).