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The rich contrast of the white, viridian, and umber tones is not consistent with the lighter color palette of Impressionism art that Hassam had seen in his time studying in Paris from 1886-89. However, the active brushwork, applied in short staccato strokes all over the canvas, is very much in the style of the French Impressionist artists, notably Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Hassam is considered the closest in style and subject to the French of the American Impressionists. Hassam builds up the surface with his brushstrokes to depict the objects and uses a lighter touch and thinner paint to describe the surrounding space with an overall, active brushwork.
The work is signed by the artist in the lower left bottom corner, with his artist’s monogram of a dashed crescent in front of his signature [1], and dated 1904. That year Hassam spent the months of June and July in Old Lyme, Connecticut, staying at a boardinghouse run by Miss Florence Griswold. Although living in New York City upon his return to the United States in 1889, the native New Englander Hassam enjoyed spending summers from the late 1880s to 1919 at picturesque spots along the New England coast, with sympathetic hosts friendly to artists. These artists’ colonies included places like Celia Thaxter’s cottage on Appledore Island, Isle of Shoals, New Hampshire; the Holley family boardinghouse in Cos Cob, Connecticut that was also located near the artist John Henry Twachtman’s farm in Greenwich, and Miss Florence Griswold’s boardinghouse in Old Lyme, Connecticut. It was after the sudden death of Twachtman, his friend (and fellow member of The Ten American Painters [2]) in 1902 that Hassam began his association with the artists’ colony at Old Lyme. In 1904, Hassam spent June and July there just as he had done the previous summer. Hassam then travelled to Oregon in August and September. It is interesting to speculate that Reynolda’ s painting was made during the summer in Connecticut and possibly taken by Hassam to Portland, Oregon, on the occasion of visiting his friend, a lawyer and amateur painter named Colonel Charles E. S. Wood. Hassam was there to install murals in Wood’s library; he traveled around Oregon and visited San Francisco and Seattle, finding subjects for his paintings.
The carved and gilded frame of Giant Magnolias, an original design by Hassam, is of special interest and might verify that the painting did in fact travel or was made in Oregon. In later 1904, Hassam would order his first custom frames from Carrig-Rohane, a shop founded in Winchester, Massachusetts in 1903 by Hermann Dudley Murphy, who also worked with Charles Prendergast, brother of the artist Maurice Prendergast. The frame is wood with gold leaf, applied over a gesso layer and red bole. The corner detail is of a stylized floral emblem. According to a letter from Hassam to Col. Wood, the Carrig-Rohane frames were shipped to Col. Wood in Portland, for paintings entitled Souvenir of Shoshone and Magnolias. [3] In a list of exhibitions held in Hassam’s lifetime, a painting Magnolias was included in Loan Exhibitions of Paintings held at the Portland Art Association, February 26 to March 17, 1906, in Summer 1909 and March 11-18, 1920 (the latter as a loan by Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett). [4] The museum’s provenance records only list that Giant Magnolias was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum in 1921 from Macbeth Galleries, and from 1947 to 1955 lent to the Brooklyn Museum by its owner Victor D. Spark of New York, who owned the work from 1947 to 1967.
Hassam did not produce many still lifes in his long career, and most of these were watercolors. Several historians, including Hoopes, Millhouse, and Weinberg have noted that generally his still lifes in oil paint have a lighter color key in hue and value. The rich and gleaming tones of this painting suggest a deeper emotional response to the subject. Perhaps he was recalling his late friend Celia Thaxter when she wrote, “For the wild Rose is but partially learned when one pauses a moment in passing to admire the sweet surprise of its beauty as it suddenly smiles up from the roadside. It cannot be learned in a single glance, nor, indeed, in many glances; it must be carefully considered and lovingly meditated upon before it yields all the marvel of its delicate glory to your intelligence.” [5]
Notes:
[1] Weinberg, H. Barbara. “Childe Hassam, American Impressionist,” American Art Review (August 2004), p. 120. Weinberg talks about the crescent that Hassam placed before his signature as being associated with Hassam’s nickname “Muley” as in “Muley Abal Hassan.” a character in Washington Irving’s The Alhambra (1832). Hassam’s Middle Eastern-sounding last name was actually derived from an English surname, Horsham.
[2] The Ten American Painters were comprised of artists dissatisfied with the conservatism of the Society of American Artists. The group was active from 1898 to 1919 and was led by Childe Hassam with John Henry Twachtman and Julian Alden Weir. The others were Frank Weston Benson, Joseph R. DeCamp, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Robert Reid, Edward E. Simmons, and Edmund Charles Tarbell. After Twachtman’s death, William Merritt Chase joined the group. They worked primarily in the Impressionist style and at least initially supported Modernism.
[3] Weinberg, H. Barbara, p. 341, n23.
[4] Weinberg, H. Barbara. Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p. 369, 383, 385 and 395.
[5] Thaxter, Celia. An Island Garden, p. 93.
ProvenanceMacbeth Gallery, New York NY [1]
To 1947
Brooklyn Museum, New York NY [2]
From 1947 to 1967
Victor D. Spark, New York [3]
From 1967
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC, purchased from Victor D. Spark, New York on April 20, 1967. [4]
Notes:
[1] Joan Durana provenance research 1983, object file
[2] See note 1.
[3] Bill of sale, object file.
[4] See note 3.
Exhibition History1947 -1955
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York NY (1947-1955)
Lent by Victor D. Spark
1953
Variations On A Theme- Flowers
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford CT (1953)
Cat. No. 15
1958
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara CA (1958)
1965-1966
Childe Hassam, A Retrospective Exhibition
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA
Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester NH
Gallery of Modern Art, New York NY
Cat. No. 37
Lent by Victor D. Spark
1971
Reynolda House American Paintings
Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Inc., New York NY (01/13/1971-01/31/1971)
Cat. No. 22
For the Smith College Scholarship Benefit Fund
1972
Childe Hassam, 1859-1935
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson; Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2/1972-4/1972)
Cat. No.27
1990-1992
American Originals, Selections from Reynolda House Museum of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
2004
Childe Hassam: American Impressionist
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY (3/22/2004-7/18/04)
Cat. No. 118
2005
Vanguard Collecting: American Art at Reynolda House
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC (4/1/2005-8/21/2005)
2024
Interior Lives: Modern American Spaces, 1890-1945
Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC (2/17/2024 - 5/12/2024)
Published ReferencesLassiter, Barbara B. Reynolda House American Paintings. Winston-Salem, NC: Reynolda House, Inc., 1971: 46, illus. 47.
Hoopes, Donelson, F. Childe Hassam New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1979.
Millhouse, Barbara B. & Workman, Robert. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 96-97.
Childe Hassam: A Retrospective Exhibit. Washington: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1965: no. 37.
Weinberg, H. Barbara. Childe Hassam, American Impressionist. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 108, 109, 120
DepartmentAmerican Art
Giant Magnolias
Artist
Childe Hassam
(1859 - 1935)
Date1904
Mediumoil on canvas
DimensionsFrame: 45 1/2 x 29 5/8 x 2 5/8 in. (115.6 x 75.2 x 6.7 cm)
Image: 35 5/8 x 19 3/4 in. (90.5 x 50.2 cm)
Canvas: 36 x 20 1/8 in. (91.4 x 51.1 cm)
SignedChilde Hassam 1904
Credit LineOriginal Purchase Fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, ARCA, and Anne Cannon Forsyth
CopyrightPublic Domain
Object number1967.2.2
DescriptionDespite the simplicity of the subject--three magnolia blossoms in a glazed stoneware vase, placed on a polished hardwood surface-- the elegance and sophistication of this still life painting by Childe Hassam is striking. The viewer’s gaze lingers over the rich creamy whites of the blossoms, the glistening blue-green glaze on the vase and the gleam of wood. Is this vase on a table, or a grand piano? What would the room that contains them look like, and who would be its owner? Learning that Hassam was a native New Englander and resident of New York City, one might wonder how he came by such exotic, southern flowers as magnolia grandiflora. The artist has established a memento mori, a reminder that even the most beautiful things will age and die. This cycle is implicit in the composition of the painting. The vertical format and closely cropped subject attracts the viewer’s gaze to rest on the central flower, still a bud, very white, beginning to unfold its petals. This central flower is flanked to either side by a fuller-blown blossom. The massive, fragrant magnolias, once picked, become discolored and desiccated within hours. Already that process is visibly underway, as several leaves have fallen on the wooden surface. The rich contrast of the white, viridian, and umber tones is not consistent with the lighter color palette of Impressionism art that Hassam had seen in his time studying in Paris from 1886-89. However, the active brushwork, applied in short staccato strokes all over the canvas, is very much in the style of the French Impressionist artists, notably Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Hassam is considered the closest in style and subject to the French of the American Impressionists. Hassam builds up the surface with his brushstrokes to depict the objects and uses a lighter touch and thinner paint to describe the surrounding space with an overall, active brushwork.
The work is signed by the artist in the lower left bottom corner, with his artist’s monogram of a dashed crescent in front of his signature [1], and dated 1904. That year Hassam spent the months of June and July in Old Lyme, Connecticut, staying at a boardinghouse run by Miss Florence Griswold. Although living in New York City upon his return to the United States in 1889, the native New Englander Hassam enjoyed spending summers from the late 1880s to 1919 at picturesque spots along the New England coast, with sympathetic hosts friendly to artists. These artists’ colonies included places like Celia Thaxter’s cottage on Appledore Island, Isle of Shoals, New Hampshire; the Holley family boardinghouse in Cos Cob, Connecticut that was also located near the artist John Henry Twachtman’s farm in Greenwich, and Miss Florence Griswold’s boardinghouse in Old Lyme, Connecticut. It was after the sudden death of Twachtman, his friend (and fellow member of The Ten American Painters [2]) in 1902 that Hassam began his association with the artists’ colony at Old Lyme. In 1904, Hassam spent June and July there just as he had done the previous summer. Hassam then travelled to Oregon in August and September. It is interesting to speculate that Reynolda’ s painting was made during the summer in Connecticut and possibly taken by Hassam to Portland, Oregon, on the occasion of visiting his friend, a lawyer and amateur painter named Colonel Charles E. S. Wood. Hassam was there to install murals in Wood’s library; he traveled around Oregon and visited San Francisco and Seattle, finding subjects for his paintings.
The carved and gilded frame of Giant Magnolias, an original design by Hassam, is of special interest and might verify that the painting did in fact travel or was made in Oregon. In later 1904, Hassam would order his first custom frames from Carrig-Rohane, a shop founded in Winchester, Massachusetts in 1903 by Hermann Dudley Murphy, who also worked with Charles Prendergast, brother of the artist Maurice Prendergast. The frame is wood with gold leaf, applied over a gesso layer and red bole. The corner detail is of a stylized floral emblem. According to a letter from Hassam to Col. Wood, the Carrig-Rohane frames were shipped to Col. Wood in Portland, for paintings entitled Souvenir of Shoshone and Magnolias. [3] In a list of exhibitions held in Hassam’s lifetime, a painting Magnolias was included in Loan Exhibitions of Paintings held at the Portland Art Association, February 26 to March 17, 1906, in Summer 1909 and March 11-18, 1920 (the latter as a loan by Mrs. Helen Ladd Corbett). [4] The museum’s provenance records only list that Giant Magnolias was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum in 1921 from Macbeth Galleries, and from 1947 to 1955 lent to the Brooklyn Museum by its owner Victor D. Spark of New York, who owned the work from 1947 to 1967.
Hassam did not produce many still lifes in his long career, and most of these were watercolors. Several historians, including Hoopes, Millhouse, and Weinberg have noted that generally his still lifes in oil paint have a lighter color key in hue and value. The rich and gleaming tones of this painting suggest a deeper emotional response to the subject. Perhaps he was recalling his late friend Celia Thaxter when she wrote, “For the wild Rose is but partially learned when one pauses a moment in passing to admire the sweet surprise of its beauty as it suddenly smiles up from the roadside. It cannot be learned in a single glance, nor, indeed, in many glances; it must be carefully considered and lovingly meditated upon before it yields all the marvel of its delicate glory to your intelligence.” [5]
Notes:
[1] Weinberg, H. Barbara. “Childe Hassam, American Impressionist,” American Art Review (August 2004), p. 120. Weinberg talks about the crescent that Hassam placed before his signature as being associated with Hassam’s nickname “Muley” as in “Muley Abal Hassan.” a character in Washington Irving’s The Alhambra (1832). Hassam’s Middle Eastern-sounding last name was actually derived from an English surname, Horsham.
[2] The Ten American Painters were comprised of artists dissatisfied with the conservatism of the Society of American Artists. The group was active from 1898 to 1919 and was led by Childe Hassam with John Henry Twachtman and Julian Alden Weir. The others were Frank Weston Benson, Joseph R. DeCamp, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Robert Reid, Edward E. Simmons, and Edmund Charles Tarbell. After Twachtman’s death, William Merritt Chase joined the group. They worked primarily in the Impressionist style and at least initially supported Modernism.
[3] Weinberg, H. Barbara, p. 341, n23.
[4] Weinberg, H. Barbara. Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, p. 369, 383, 385 and 395.
[5] Thaxter, Celia. An Island Garden, p. 93.
ProvenanceMacbeth Gallery, New York NY [1]
To 1947
Brooklyn Museum, New York NY [2]
From 1947 to 1967
Victor D. Spark, New York [3]
From 1967
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC, purchased from Victor D. Spark, New York on April 20, 1967. [4]
Notes:
[1] Joan Durana provenance research 1983, object file
[2] See note 1.
[3] Bill of sale, object file.
[4] See note 3.
Exhibition History1947 -1955
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York NY (1947-1955)
Lent by Victor D. Spark
1953
Variations On A Theme- Flowers
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford CT (1953)
Cat. No. 15
1958
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara CA (1958)
1965-1966
Childe Hassam, A Retrospective Exhibition
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA
Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester NH
Gallery of Modern Art, New York NY
Cat. No. 37
Lent by Victor D. Spark
1971
Reynolda House American Paintings
Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Inc., New York NY (01/13/1971-01/31/1971)
Cat. No. 22
For the Smith College Scholarship Benefit Fund
1972
Childe Hassam, 1859-1935
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson; Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2/1972-4/1972)
Cat. No.27
1990-1992
American Originals, Selections from Reynolda House Museum of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
2004
Childe Hassam: American Impressionist
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY (3/22/2004-7/18/04)
Cat. No. 118
2005
Vanguard Collecting: American Art at Reynolda House
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC (4/1/2005-8/21/2005)
2024
Interior Lives: Modern American Spaces, 1890-1945
Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC (2/17/2024 - 5/12/2024)
Published ReferencesLassiter, Barbara B. Reynolda House American Paintings. Winston-Salem, NC: Reynolda House, Inc., 1971: 46, illus. 47.
Hoopes, Donelson, F. Childe Hassam New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1979.
Millhouse, Barbara B. & Workman, Robert. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 96-97.
Childe Hassam: A Retrospective Exhibit. Washington: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1965: no. 37.
Weinberg, H. Barbara. Childe Hassam, American Impressionist. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 108, 109, 120
Status
Not on view