Lyman's Ledge, Appledore 

Childe Hassam made Lyman's Ledge, Appledore with oil paint on canvas, using a broken, impressionistic touch. Each dab of paint is like a brick, composing a scene that is both representational and abstract. This approach, of course, involved labor, but not in the way that we normally think about it. It's the kind of repetitive, cumulative gesture associated with craft – weaving, mosaic, even dry stone walling, rather than the flash of genius we associate with modern painting. And that is revealing, because in its time, Impressionism was viewed with suspicion by the art establishment, precisely because it seemed to flaunt its own materiality and facture. It was too close to decoration, and too far from the supposed intellectualism of academic painting. So next time you look at an Impressionist landscape, think about it not just as a pretty scene, but as a record of repeated action, and a challenge to the hierarchy of art itself.