Childe Hassam

The present work will be included in Stuart Feld and Kathleen Burnside's catalogue raisonné of the artist's work. We wish to thank Alice Duncan for her help researching this artwork and assistance with the following lot essay.

Provenance:
The Hanley Collection.
The Pfeil Collection.
Adelson Galleries, Inc., New York, New York, 1998.
Property from a Private Collection.

Exhibited:
Columbus, Ohio, The Columbus Gallery of Fine Art, Works from the Hanley Collection, November 7 - December 15, 1968.
Boston, Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum, 1983 (extended loan).

Literature:
Adelson Galleries, Inc. and Meredith Long & Company, Childe Hassam: An American Impressionist, exh. cat., New York, 1999, no. 9, illus.

Lot Essay:
The success of Childe Hassam’s metropolitan views of Boston, New York, and Paris is attributed to his love of observing the vitality of city life and his unique style of composition, color light, and atmosphere. Hassam’s paintings of Parisian boulevards have long been acknowledged as masterworks of the artist’s oeuvre, with the present work certainly amongst the finest. 

In 1886 the artist and his wife settled in Paris where they would remain for the next three years. The painter studied at the Académie Julien but it was his independent study of “modern” art (the Impressionists) that freed Hassam in palette, subject matter and style, and set the tone for his major works to come.  

September Sunlight is a snapshot of contemporary life in Paris- capturing couture, the café life, the traffic, and the parks of this modern city. The scene takes place at the terrace of Café du Tambourin, a restaurant owned by Agostina Segatori. Originally set in the heart of Paris, rue de Richelieu, the famous café reopened on the Boulevard de Clichy not long before the present work was completed. It hosted many artists, including van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas, who lived nearby. Hassam represented the café on at least one other occasion, revealing his interest in depicting modern, buoyant urban life, which French Impressionists tended to neglect, favoring the rural countryside.