Before he created the flag paintings, Hassam had already begun to experiment with the technique of etching, and he depicted the streets of New York City in these works. Indeed, Hassam was able to establish himself as not only an Impressionist painter but also as a printmaker, and, as Czestochowski, “was able to capture the elusive spirit that vitalized his paintings and translate its endearing qualities to the print media” because he approached printmaking as a painter (Czestochowski, Foreward). Indeed, as one of his friends, Joseph Pennell, wrote in a letter, Hassam’s prints ‘are you [Hassam] and that is what most etchers’ work is not…[because]the subjects of your plates are the subjects you know” (Pennell, ix). The medium of printmaking allowed Hassam, disillusioned with New York City, to explore the subject of New York City and infuse it with his own meaning in a new way. As Pennell continues to write, Hassam felt that “America, [his] country, is full of subjects, and that [his] New York is the most marvelous and endless subject on the face of the earth” (Pennel, ix) and attempts to show this in his prints.
So, although, after seeing the flags hanging in New York City, Hassam decided to return to the medium of painting to depict his new vision of the city, he also injected the idea of the flags framing the city into several of his prints including New York Bouquet. The subjects of this print correlates to his painting, The New York Bouquet: West Forty-Second Street, 1917, as the print New York Bouquet pictures the same skyscraper, the building for the Bush Terminal oil company, in Times Square. In this print, Hassam, like in his paintings, uses the French flag to frame the building and draw the viewer’s attention to it, emphasizing it as a symbol of wealth and power and evoking national pride.
In another print created slightly earlier, Washington’s Birthday, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, 1916, Hassam emphasizes this theme even further as the flags are pushed completely to the sides of the picture. The angle of the flags simply acts as a pointer tool for the viewer to notice the tall triangular shaped building in the center of the print. Indeed, this unusually shaped building is the Flatiron building in New York City, a recognizable landmark that has come to be symbolic of the city itself. At the time, the Flatiron building on Broadway “basked in the public limelight as that thoroughfare’s most famous tall edifice - not by virtue of its size…but by reason of its great cost;” the building cost around four million dollars to construct when it was erected in 1902 (Marcuse, 178). Such a vast amount of money needed at the time hints that the Flatiron building stood as a symbol for American wealth and prosperity because it was such an expensive structure that the nation could afford to build. So, in this print as well, Hassam is able to stir up patriotic pride with the portrayal of a landmark building highlighted by the flags.
Images (from top to bottom)
Childe Hassam. New York Bouquet. 1917. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
Childe Hassam. Washington’s Birthday, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, 1916. 1916. Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.