The Bad Boys of Art

Frederick Childe Hassam, born in 1859, became arguably, the most important American Impressionist, and was also a pretty good example of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.  

Street in Portsmouth

The son of a prosperous banker, he was forced to leave school and get a job in 1872 after a devastating fire ruined his father financially.  

He was apprenticed to a wood engraver, and learned to draw, eventually creating illustrations for Harper's and the Century.  At night he attended classes at the Boston Art Club, studied with William Rimmer at the Lowell Institute, and took a few private painting lessons. 

At the age of 24, Childe visited Great Britain and the European continent for two months, to get a look at the Old Masters, and do a little watercolor painting in the English countryside.  It isn't difficult to imagine his desire to return after arriving home.  In 1886, he moved to Paris to study at the conservative school, The Academie Julien.

Today, Impressionism is appreciated by a vast number of people, even those who might not be particularly interested in art...

But in 1874, "Impressionism" was a derogatory term coined to describe paintings that were considered to be an assault upon traditional art and good taste. 

To critics, Impressionism was a revolutionary insurrection by artists

who were irreverent and had, quite frankly,

kind of a weird way of looking at the world.

The avant-garde style of that rogue gang of painters- Jean Claude Monet, Pierre-August Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edward Manet, and Frederic Bazille, forever changed young Childe Hassam's ideas about painting.

Impressionism is focused on the relationships between form, light and color and showing movement and fleeting passages of time and atmosphere.   

It uses loose brush strokes, ordinary subjects and sometimes unusual compositions or visual angles,

and it was a radical departure from the realistic, polished paintings of the French school.

Childe moved back to New York in 1889.  His understanding of correct structural form and composition, and mastery of Impressionist technique eventually got his paintings noticed, and he became well-known for his landscapes and New York street scenes.

Today, we're used to artists who paint to shock.  But it's important to note that for the Impressionist revolutionaries, shocking as they were, that wasn't actually their intent.

Previously, art had been mostly religious, allegorical and political, and the creation of art had been directed largely by the rich and powerful.  

Before Impressionism, art had been used to teach lessons, promote the moralizations of the church, threaten, show the vast riches and superiority of those who could afford to commission it, titillate with veiled references to things one wasn't supposed to talk about, 

and portray things the average person couldn't have.

The Impressionists, however, painted beauty in daily life 

  

-shoveling snow on a cold but sunny morning, the bustle of a rainy evening, running errands. 

    

 Simple things and common moments that are free and available to everyone.  Why?

    Just because.

Beauty.  Unconventional, natural, free, and for no particular good reason.  Now that's revolutionary.

From our library:

                


If you happen to be in Williamsburg, VA between now and January 22nd.  Do stop in at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, and see the show, "Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists."  The fabulous Muscarelle is off of Jamestown road on the campus of the College of William and Mary.