Paintings I love
Poppies on the Isles of Shoals
Frederick Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935)
Oil on canvas
1890
65.4 x 75.2 x 10.2 cm
Brooklyn Museum
Throughout his career, Frederick Childe Hassam made several extended trips to Europe, where he was stimulated by the sights and the many artists he met. A Back Road, completed the year after his first European tour, demonstrates a compositional daring and freedom of brushwork that were still unusual in American art of this period. Inspired by the works of the nineteenth-century French Barbizon School, Hassam emphasized heavy brushstrokes, intense lighting effects, and flatness.
During a return visit several years later, Hassam found “a charming old French garden” at Villiers-le-Bel, near Paris. The setting reminded him of Appledore Island, home to his friend the poet Celia Thaxter. Poppies on the Isles of Shoals is one of a number of works painted on Appledore, off the coast of Maine, in the years immediately following his Paris sojourn.
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