Landscape at Newfields, New Hampshire 1909

Childe Hassam made this landscape of Newfields in New Hampshire with brushes loaded with strokes of blues, greens, yellows and whites. Just look at that sky - you can imagine the artist looking up and daubing the canvas with the same joyful rhythm as the clouds forming above him. I wonder what it was like for Hassam to plant himself there and try to capture what he saw? What does it feel like to translate a whole view into a few marks? Here, the texture is built up, the touches of paint are really present. Notice how the horizontal brushstrokes of paint communicate the flowing movement of the river. It’s as if he is trying to catch a feeling, rather than fix a view. Painters have always learned from each other and built upon what came before them. In this way, this artwork has emerged from a long and rich conversation between artists. And it keeps going.