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October 17, 2017

Childe Hassam, “Old Mulford House East Hampton

Childe Hassam, Old Mulford House, East Hampton, 1930, oil on canvas, 35 3/8 x 36 7/8 inches. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, gift of Odell and Eva Lopp, 1975.

On this day in 1859, Childe Hassam was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Destined to become the most famous American Impressionist, Hassam is known for his bold use of color and his confident brushstrokes. These characteristics are on full display in the renowned series of flag paintings that Hassam painted during World War I, depicting patriotic displays of American flags on 5th Avenue in New York City. His artistic style, however, is no less extravagant in his paintings of everything from bucolic landscapes to Manhattan skyscrapers. Hassam first visited the charming community of East Hampton, Long Island, in 1898. He purchased a home there twenty-one years later at the age of sixty-three and spent much of the last seventeen years of his life sketching in the village. His local subjects included the historic Mulford House, considered the most picturesque landmark in town and one of the most significant seventeenth-century structures on Long Island. Here his unblended brushstrokes and lively colors depict the house shimmering in the summer sunlight.