Lady Walking down Fifth Avenue 1902

Childe Hassam made "Lady Walking down Fifth Avenue" with oil on canvas, and it's just amazing how he captured a moment in time. Look at the broken brushstrokes and the way he's dabbed the paint on, it really shows that artmaking is a process, where each mark builds on the last. There’s something about the texture and the way the light hits the surface that makes the snow look so real you could almost feel the chill. The colors are muted, like looking through a fogged window, but there are these bright pops of color in the woman's skirt and the buildings that really make the painting sing. If you look closely at the way he painted the lady's dress, how the brushstrokes dance and swirl, it's like he's capturing the movement of the fabric in the wind. It reminds me a little of Whistler and his cityscapes, but Hassam has this energy, this vitality, that's all his own. It's proof that art is always in conversation with itself, always changing, always evolving.