St. Mark’s in the Bowery 1910

Childe Hassam made this painting of St. Mark’s in the Bowery with strokes of blues, greens, and whites. I think of him standing there, trying to capture the light on the street, and how the spire rises above the leafy trees. What was it like to stand there then? What was he trying to catch? He layers the paint, dragging and daubing it onto the canvas; little dashes and commas of pigment, building up the image bit by bit. Look at how he renders the wet street with horizontal strokes—you can almost feel the slickness underfoot. It must have been hard to paint outside then! It’s interesting how artists are always in conversation with each other, even across time. Hassam, like Monet, was trying to catch the fleeting moment, those transient effects of light and atmosphere. This painting offers us a way to pause and look at the city with fresh eyes, and to imagine the feeling of a rainy day in New York, captured in paint.