Before we proceed to a discussion of his flag series, however, we must first look at the history of Hassam’s paintings of New York City as well as the period in which the series was created, namely World War I and the home front movement. According to Fort, Childe Hassam, even by the time he began to paint the flag series in 1916, had already secured “his reputation as the leading American impressionist…with the picturesque city images” he had done of New York City (Fort, Flag Paintings, 8) after his move to New York in 1889 (Weinberg, 7). According to Barbara Weinberg, another Hassam scholar, Hassam was amazed at the “energy and uniqueness of modern New York” (Weinberg, 87) and even remarked in 1898,
The old part, the Bowery, etc., is not so interesting as the new. The old part is picturesque, but it is not picturesque in an original way. The new part is unlike any other place. It is distinguished, vital and picturesque in its own way. It has character and force, and that is why I like it (qtd. Weinberg, 87).
It is this “new part” of New York City, or the part of the city that reflected the new industrial nature of the nation, that Hassam considered to have “character and force” (qtd. Hassam, Weinberg, 87). Indeed, during the period in which Hassam painted New York City, from 1889-1896 and then after his brief visit to Europe from 1897-1919 (Weinberg, 203), the city underwent a modern transformation. Hence, his works show a progression from the “old part” of the city with brownstones and carriages as in his painting View of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, painted in 1890, to a bustling, industrial, modern metropolis with the skyscrapers and automobiles of the “new part” as depicted in Lower Manhattan (View Down Broad Street) in 1907 (Weinberg, 87, 203).
However, as New York continued to develop into a modern metropolis, Hassam became disenchanted with the city, and ceased to depict it in his paintings as much as he had before. Although he had once been fascinated by what James Van Dyke, a contemporary writer, called the “new New York” and the rush to modernity, he came to reject “the urbanization and industrialization that [he] felt polluted the visual environment,” according to Fort (Fort, Childe Hassam’s New York, XII). Instead, he felt nostalgia for the past era of New York, moving away from his earlier fascination with “the new” (qtd. Hassam, Weinberg, 87). So rather than showing the “polluted,” industrial New York with its industrial city streets in his artwork (Fort, New York, XII), Hassam began to portray secluded parks and elegant apartments in window series (Weinberg, 7). Also, during this period, Hassam began to explore views of the city almost solely through printmaking. As Joseph Czestochowski argues “Hassam’s originality as a painter waned at the turn of the century, [and] his pursuit of the graphic media represented an attempt to capture the dynamism and vitality he felt lacking in his paintings” (Czestochowski, Foreword). Therefore, by the time World War I broke out in 1914, and America began to be involved in 1917, Childe Hassam had found himself searching for a new, dynamic, and original way to portray New York City.
Images (from top to bottom)
Childe Hassam. View of Broadway and Fifth Avenue. 1890. Private collection.
Childe Hassam. Lower Manhattan (View Down Broad Street). 1907. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.