Browse

Accession #	47.122
Artist	Frederick Childe Hassam
Title	A Back Road
Date	1884
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	frame: 37 7/8 x 32 x 3 1/4 in. (96.2 x 81.3 x 8.3 cm) 31 x 24 3/4 in. (78.8 x 62.8 cm)
Signed	Signed lower left: "Childe Hassam/84"
Credit Line	Caroline H. Polhemus Fund
Location	Visible Storage: Case 16, Screen H (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks: Throughout his career, Frederick Childe Hassam made several extended trips to Europe, where he was inspired by the sights and the many artists he met there. A Back Road, completed the year after his first European tour, demonstrates a compositional daring and freedom of brushwork that were still unusual in American art of this period. Influenced by the work of the nineteenth-century French Barbizon School, Hassam emphasized heavy brushstrokes and intense lighting effects.

During a return visit several years later, Hassam found “a charming old French garden” at Villiers-le-Bel, near Paris. The setting reminded him of Appledore Island off the coast of Maine, home to his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. Poppies on the Isles of Shoals is one of a number of works painted on Appledore in the years immediately following his Paris sojourn.