Seascape, Isles of Shoals 1903

Childe Hassam made this watercolor, Seascape, Isles of Shoals, likely en plein air. Look at how he’s built up the image with these transparent washes and quick, staccato brushstrokes. He lets the white of the paper shine through, giving the scene this airy, shimmering quality. I can almost feel the sun on my skin and smell the salty air! What was Hassam thinking as he squatted on the rocks? How did he capture the subtle shifts in light and color, the way the water dances and reflects the sky? See the rocks in the foreground, rendered with these short, choppy strokes of brown, blue, and purple. They remind me of Cézanne, actually. He was another painter who was trying to capture the fleeting, sensory experience of being in nature. For Hassam, like so many artists, painting was an embodied act, a way of feeling and thinking through the world. And those sailboats in the distance? They are like little thoughts, drifting across the surface of his mind.