Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam | 1859–1935 | Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain 1918 1918 | Oil on canvas | 91.4 x 72.1cm | Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967) 1967 (67.187.127) | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Photograph courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Avenue of the allies, Great Britain, 1918 1918
Childe Hassam (1859–1935) first visited Paris in 1883 and returned with his wife in 1886 for three years. He enrolled at the Académie Julian under the tutelage of Gustave-Rodolphe Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. Hassam followed the direction of French painting at the time in its depiction of modern life and urban scenes. He left Paris in 1889 and settled in New York, from where he regularly took excursions to paint in New England and Appeldore, in the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire.
During World War One, Hassam painted views of New York's Fifth Avenue decorated as ‘the Avenue of the Allies’. This painting depicts part of the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive. Planned by a committee of artists and architects, this spectacle involved the decoration of Fifth Avenue between Twenty-sixth and Fifty-eighth Streets. Here, Hassam looked north from Fifty-third Street and compressed into a vibrant pattern three blocks dedicated to the flags of Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil and Belgium. The artist painted at least 30 flag pictures such as this, and they were exhibited often in groups of 22, as a reminder of the number of allied nations.
