Childe Hassam

While studying in Paris in the 1880s, Hassam acquired an appreciation of the French Impressionists’ fresh palette and broken brushstroke. He applied these techniques in his landscapes and city views, including some of Manhattan, where he spent his winters.

In this snowy street scene, a courier trudges past storefronts, carrying documents from one business to another. The subject is unusual for Hassam, who had little interest in depicting the grittier conditions of urban life. Even here he remains primarily concerned with composition and with the evocative weather conditions that veil the street in blue and yellow light.

Hassam was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and developed skills as an illustrator and watercolorist early in his career. After a trip abroad in 1883, he returned to Boston to paint atmospheric urban views that reflected the American interest in tonalism and the influence of James Whistler. Hassam’s later trips to France exposed him to the fresh palette and broken brushstroke of the Impressionists, which he applied to urban scenes for the remainder of his long career.

In 1898, Hassam became a founding member of “The Ten,” an association of like-minded American painters who sought improved exhibition spaces for their work. Some of Hassam’s most celebrated subjects were views of Manhattan, usually painted with a bright palette. He became increasingly aware of the city’s greater urbanization at the turn of the century and, like most New York painters, fled the city during the summer. To his friend Florence Griswold he wrote: "I don't know that I wish a very large dose of New York for any of my friends." This sentiment may underlie the faint grittiness of Messenger Boy, a street scene of shop fronts punctuated by a courier whose messenger bag is slung over his shoulder. This underpaid service was crucial to businesses that required the transfer of documents from one office to another; but Hassam was more interested in composition and atmosphere than in social realism. His subject is less the working messenger boy than the evocative weather conditions that veil the street in blue and yellow light.