The Victorian Chair 1906

Childe Hassam made this painting of a woman in a chair with oil on canvas. Look at the red blooms on the chair – they’re kind of clunky and awkward, but not in a bad way. I can imagine Hassam really having to work at it, pushing the paint around, maybe even scraping some off and starting again. It makes me wonder if he was thinking about the materiality of paint itself while he worked. I can picture him mixing colors on his palette, trying to find just the right shade of red to capture the light and shadow. It is almost like the artist is trying to capture a moment of contemplation, where the woman is lost in thought, framed by the chair's embrace. Painting can be a slow dance, right? Hassam is in conversation with other painters, reaching back to the past and forwards to the future, all through the language of light and color. Each brushstroke is a little note in that ongoing dialogue.