Frederick Childe Hassam (b. October 17, 1859, Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts – d. August 27, 1935, East Hampton, New York) was an American Impressionist painter. Hassam (pronounced HASS'm;) (known to all as Childe, pronounced like child) was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on October 17, 1855. His father was a successful Boston businessman who was ruined financially in the great fire of 1872. Hassam left high school without graduating and ended up working for a Boston wood engraver.
As an artist his formal studies were begun at the Boston Art Club (1878) and later continued at the Acadèmie Julian in Paris (1886-1889). He was greatly influenced by Louis Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. He attended drawing classes at the Lowell Institute, a division of MIT, and was a member of the Boston Art Club. The early portion of his artistic career were devoted to illustrations and watercolors. At the age of 23 Hassam was exhibiting publicly and had his first solo exhibition, of watercolors, at the Williams and Everett Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts in 1892. From this time forward, Hassam was committed to the life of a professional painter. Recognition came early in both the U.S. and abroad. In 1884 he married Kathleen Maudï Doane. Two years later he set off for Paris to complete his artistic training at Academie Julian. In addition, it being the center of the art world at the time Paris was home to several of the most celebrated art schools in the world. Academie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux Arts were home to many other American artists. Both of these schools used figure drawing and painting as the primary training ground for acquisition of all artistic schools. Hassam was extremely active in the social and technical areas of the artistic community.
In 1890, he, and several others, founded the New York Water Color Club. He also joined the American Water Color Society and shortly thereafter joined the Players Club and the Society of American Artists. He went on to found other artistic societies and join other clubs and as a result the society of artists and collectors in New York, the art capital of the United States, regularly saw and purchased his work. The fruition of this entrepreneurial fervor came about in 1897 when he help establish the Ten American Painters, an exhibiting group that included many of the finest painters of the day: Frank W. Bensen, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Dewing, John Twachtman and J. Alden Weir.
In 1919, he purchased a home in East Hampton, New York. Hassam is famous for his series of 22 flag paintings, which he began in 1916, when he was inspired by a Preparedness Parade (for World War I) held on Fifth Avenue in New York. Monet, among other French artists, had also painted flag-themed works, but Hassam's have a different, distinctly American character. They all depict Fifth Aveue, Fifty-Seventh Street, or streets near Hassam's gallery at the time, which was on West Fifty-Seventh Street. The Metropolitan Museum, the New-York Historical Society and the National Gallery of Art all own a Hassam flag painting. He died in New York, aged 75.
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