Hill of the Sun, San Anselmo, California 1914

Childe Hassam painted "Hill of the Sun, San Anselmo, California" with oil on canvas, using a style of broken brushstrokes, which feels like a kind of visual stutter. The paint is applied pretty thick here; you can really see how he's dragging the brush across the surface, especially in the way he's built up the foliage. It’s like he's trying to capture not just the look of the landscape, but also the feeling of light as it filters through the trees. Look closely at the shadows on the hill; they're not just dark, but full of blues and greens, which makes the whole scene vibrate with life. The way he contrasts the thick dabs of paint in the foreground with the smoother strokes in the sky adds a certain kind of depth, pulling you into the scene. It reminds me a little of Van Gogh, in the way that he uses paint to express a feeling. I think it shows how art is always in conversation with itself, across time and artists. It invites us to see the world in new ways, not just as it is, but as it could be.