Spring, Navesink Highlands
1908
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans
Accession Number
1909.7.27
Tags
About this artwork
Childe Hassam lived in New York, but he also spent a good deal of time away from the chaos of urban life, painting landscapes and quaint villages in New England. (Pyne, Art and the Higher Life, 1999) In this painting of New Jersey's Navesink Highlands, he used quick brushstrokes to capture the effect of a cool spring breeze in the flickering leaves and ripples on the water. After he had chosen a frame for the piece he wrote to his patron William T. Evans that "I am glad to say it looks as fine a...
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...