CHILDE HASSAM AND THE BATHERS

CHILDE HASSAM AND THE BATHERS

by Joan Baden

It is often customary to whisk our tours away from the nudity that greets them throughout the Gallery.  The tittering and poking that sometimes occurs has long been something of a problem to us, and we each have tried to work out solutions.  Escape is one method!  I would like to suggest that for our older students and certainly for adults, we use a head-on exploration of works which include nudes.  We could begin with the work of  one of America's leading Impressionists, Childe Hassam.

Hassam, born in 1859 in Boston, studied in Paris in the late 1880s, was exposed to the work of the Impressionists, and became one of America's first converts.  In 1898, with J. Alden Weir, he founded the group of American Impressionists known as The Ten, which included John Twachtman and Edmund Tarbell.

The Bathers (63.27) is believed to have been painted as a mural decoration for the residence of Charles Erskine Scott Wood of Portland, Oregon, a West Coast lawyer, collector, amateur artist and good friend of Hassam. On one of Hassam’s visits, Wood took him camping in the Oregon wilds, and some forty canvasses resulted.  In a letter to Weir, Wood wrote that he wanted his "bric-a-brac house" to get back "to Greek simplicity."  In addition to inviting Hassam to do a mural for his library, Wood lined up Weir to do a painting for his dining room and Albert Pinkham Ryder a work for the hall!

Hassam's mural was painted in New York City and transported to Portland to be installed by the artist.  In later years, when the house was torn down, the mural was removed, and Wood gave it to his daughter Nan Wood Honeyman.  It was later acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Ogden Phipps of New York, who gave it to the Memorial Art Gallery in 1963.

The painting has been described as a "pastoral scene full of sunshine and warmth against an exquisite background of bluish tints."  In all likelihood, it was inspired by Hassam's visits to the Isles of Shoals, which lie ten miles off the US mainland near the New Hampshire-Maine border.  Appledore, the gem of the nine islands, was the location of the gardens of his friend, the writer Celia Thaxter.  Hassam's painting of Thaxter in her garden appears in the frontispiece of her book, Island Garden.  It has been suggested that Hassam owed a debt to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painter of the grand murals at the Parthenon and the Sorbonne in Paris and in the Boston Public Library.

As we examine this oil painting, we see seven nudes, the center figure holding a mirror bearing a reflection; several are in the water; several are wearing garlands.  Trees are painted in clumps, and there are about twenty bushes and many rock formations.  At the horizon one can see outcroppings—other islands, perhaps?  The water is turquoise, the cloud yellow, orange and white.  The spaces between the dabs of paint suggest the dappling of the sun. The broken color method with alternate streaks and stripes of pure color in close proximity is certainly reflective of Impressionism. The general composition is symmetrical.  It is clear that Hassam was a seeker of sunlight and bright skies.

There is nothing vulgar about these nudes.  Some critics have suggested that Hassam appeared to have had difficulty in painting them: they seem flat—almost as if they were pasted on the landscape in a decorative arrangement.  (We might compare them to the realistic nude in John Koch's Interlude.)

There is much that can be discussed about this painting on our tours:  the spatial relationships; the contrast of horizontal and vertical; the blue sea vs. the amber red cliffs; the contrasts and similarities in the brush strokes of The Bathers and the other Impressionists in our collection.

And let us not ignore the judicious placement of this painting in the Gallery, near Piping Pan and Bacchante and Faun.  There are marvelous tie-ins here.  Pan, the Greek god of shepherds and hunters, constantly wandered through woods, playing and dancing with nymphs.  A faun, half human/half goat, was god of the woods and herds, and was a follower of Pan and Bacchus, god of wine.  The bacchante were worshippers of Bacchus, enjoying dancing, drinking and revelry.  Nymphs were maidens who guarded various realms of nature:  hills, mountains, seas, rivers, trees and forests.

We will soon see more of Hassam's Impressionistic works when The Impressionists' New York opens later this month.  Meanwhile, have a long, good look at The Bathers.