Frederick Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam, one of the great American Impressionists, gives us a glimpse of the satisfaction and exhaustion following a bravura piano performance. This is a very textured painting and between the impasto and the composition, between the yellow rose and unlit candle on the piano, and between the blossom-laden Japanese silk hanging and barely visible painting within a painting (which resembles the reflections of a rain-spattered landscape), I hear the final notes of the piano sonata lingering in the room. The pianist is spent; she holds the pages of music on her lap and seems to enjoy the reverie of artistic accomplishment. Hassam skillfully renders the exciting feel of the dress fabric in contrast to the polished wood of the piano and grainy wood of the frames. This painting is a celebration of beauty across multiple senses.
Hassam was born and raised in Boston and came to oil painting through commercial engraving, illustrations, and watercolor. He traveled throughout Europe and studied in Paris; he took to the Impressionist style and was a key proponent of exposing the American art world to Impressionism. While in Paris he even took over a studio that had been vacated by Renoir! He absorbed concepts and theories while in Paris but returned to America with his own ideas about subject and composition.
I love how the artist has signed and dated (1893) the painting within a painting and allows them to stand in for the attribution of The Sonata itself. Thanks to Erik, a Visitor Services Officer at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, with whom I had a great conversation about this painting, his favorite in the collection.
- Brad Allen