Maréchal Niel Roses
1919
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
Accession Number
1929.6.58
Tags
About this artwork
Childe Hassam posed a young model at a mahogany table with two vases of Maréchal Niel roses, a flower named for Napoléon IIIâs secretary of war. Hassam believed that people were shaped by their environments, and here the hybrid roses symbolize Americaâs culture, which he thought had absorbed the best elements of European and Asian history. The two women in the painting, a blonde and a brunette, similarly evoke different âstrainsâ that had blended to create an American hybrid of woman...
About the Artist
Childe Hassam · 1859–1935
Frederick Childe Hassam, born on October 17, 1859, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to a family of New England descent with ties to Nathaniel Hawthorne through his mother, Rosa Delia Hawthorne, displayed an early aptitude for art. After his father's cutlery business was ruined by the Great Boston Fire of 1872, Hassam apprenticed as a wood engraver under George E. Johnson while taking drawing and wate...