Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam

(b.1859, Dorchester, MA; d.1935, East Hampton, NY)

Le Jour du Grand Prix, 1888

Oil on canvas

Grace Judd Landers Fund

1943.14

Childe Hassam (1859-1935)
Le Jour de Grand Prix, 1888

Childe Hassam was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the son of a prosperous merchant who collected antiques. He began his career as a wood engraver and supported himself for several decades by illustrating books and periodicals including Harper's and Scribner's. Hassam studied drawing with sculptor William Rimmer at the Lowell Institute and painting with the Munich-trained Ignaz Marcel Gaugengigl while still in Boston. In 1886, during his second trip to Europe, he studied at the Académie Julian, receiving instruction based on traditional figure drawing. His exposure to Impressionism came through exhibitions he saw in both Europe and the United States. With Le Jour de Grand Prix, Hassam incorporated the Impressionist manner into his artistic vocabulary. By 1907 critic Albert Gallatin proclaimed Hassam "beyond any doubt the greatest exponent of Impressionism in America."

Inaugurated in 1863, the Grand Prix was a 3,000-meter race for three-year-old horses from any country, held at the Longchamp track in the recently relandscaped Bois de Bologne. The final race in the spring season, the Grand Prix signaled the closing of the society season before the vacations of summer. In 1887, the Grand Prix was held on the first Sunday of June. The brilliant sunlight and abbreviated shadows in Hassam's painting indicate a time shortly after noon, the hour that racegoers thronged to the Bois. There, people like those Hassam depicts would spend the early afternoon picnicking, sipping Champagne, eyeing one another's costumes, and placing their bets. The races at Longchamp has earlier been portrayed by French Impressionists Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet, who depicted the jockeys and spectators at the track.

Like a true Parisian, Hassam was attuned to the subtle gradations of status signalled in the fashions and equipages portrayed in his painting. The most prominent vehicle is a road or mail coach, which was popular for the races because it gave its passengers an unobstructed view over the crowd. Since it required a stable of at least four horses, plus alternate vehicles for bad weather, the mail coach was an obvious sign of wealth. Furthermore, unlike the victoria (two-passenger coach) and laundau (four) also depicted in Hassam's painting, the mail coach was not available to rent. The women atop the mail coach wear pastel dresses and high-crowned, narrow-brimmed hats trimmed with feathers or flowers. Their clothing, significantly brighter than that worn by the spectators on foot, suggests an attention to fashion. Every spring, French periodicals illustrated costumes for the races that were far more elaborate than those for social calls, promenades, or even dinners.

The New Britain Museum's painting is closely related to a study of the same scene in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Boston study, smaller in scale and more subdued in color, was painted first. Hassam recreated the brilliant sunshine of the New Britain painting some six months later. "Just now . . . I am painting sunlight," he wrote to a friend in November 1887, explaining that colleagues who had seen his smaller version of the subject had urged him to paint it larger. "I hope I shall do it as well as the smaller one which I though was successful in some ways," he added. Hassam made few changes to the composition, but brightened the palette and loosened his brushwork. The carefully calculated result marked his first decisive foray into Impressionism.