Childe Hassam: Across the Common on Winter Evening. 1885
I know I had lived many lives before the one I live today, maybe that is why I feel a strong connection to Childe Hassam’ paintings.
It is a little bit unearthly how the black figures are coming closer and closer to the viewer on the golden ground in the triangle shaped composition. The triangle’s edge is in the middle of the picture right at the bottom where the black lady is approaching towards us. The figures are faceless demons of the night, only gloomy tarnishes of an era, where the lights meant everything.
Childe Hassam gave impressionism another path with using the forbidden shadow, not even color, black, on his paintings. He used black in a way that he was still capable to keep the impressionist features and created a beautiful, mysterious atmosphere. Hassam used only golden yellow and black with a small amount of orange and the painting still definitely looks impressionist.
Childe Hassam called himself extreme impressionist. He admired Turner and the Fifth Avenue, urban life scenes with rain and snow and wind. When he moved in to Renoir’s former studio in Paris he found some of his leftover paintings. Childe Hassam knew little about Renoir but was impressed very much by his works.
It is such a shame I was not there that time. My other myself was certainly roaming the groomed parks, was crossing the bridges over the Seine, and was searching for something that she cannot find ever since.
