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A Back Road

Frederick Childe Hassam

American Art

Throughout his career, Frederick Childe Hassam made several extended trips to Europe, where he was inspired by the sights and the many artists he met there. A Back Road, completed the year after his first European tour, demonstrates a compositional daring and freedom of brushwork that were still unusual in American art of this period. Influenced by the work of the nineteenth-century French Barbizon School, Hassam emphasized heavy brushstrokes and intense lighting effects.

During a return visit several years later, Hassam found “a charming old French garden” at Villiers-le-Bel, near Paris. The setting reminded him of Appledore Island off the coast of Maine, home to his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. Poppies on the Isles of Shoals is one of a number of works painted on Appledore in the years immediately following his Paris sojourn.
MEDIUM Oil on canvas
DATES 1884
DIMENSIONS frame: 37 7/8 x 32 x 3 1/4 in. (96.2 x 81.3 x 8.3 cm) 31 x 24 3/4 in. (78.8 x 62.8 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Signed lower left: "Childe Hassam/84"
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 47.122
CREDIT LINE Caroline H. Polhemus Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Frederick Childe Hassam (American, 1859–1935). A Back Road, 1884. Oil on canvas, frame: 37 7/8 x 32 x 3 1/4 in. (96.2 x 81.3 x 8.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Caroline H. Polhemus Fund, 47.122 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 47.122_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 47.122_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
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