A Vermont Village 1923

Childe Hassam made this etching, A Vermont Village, with ink and a metal plate. I imagine him outside, squinting in the rain, as he sketched out the scene. Look at those quick, nervous lines; they describe the architecture and suggest the rain coming down. It's like he was wrestling with the Vermont weather, trying to capture it before it changed its mind. Hassam's marks build up the forms of the trees and houses, not with careful detail but with a kind of shorthand. See how he uses the white of the paper to suggest light and space? The composition of A Vermont Village makes me think of Whistler's etchings, with the placement of the buildings and the slightly elevated point of view. It's like he’s in conversation with other artists, riffing on their ideas. That church spire is a little off-center, isn't it? And that road leading into the village. I bet he liked that; I bet he was thinking about how the light falls on wet pavement and how to translate that to a two-dimensional surface.