Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam | 1859–1935 | The Water Garden 1909 | Oil on canvas | 61 x 91.4 | Partial and Promised Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Dillon, 1994 (1994.450) | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Water Garden 1909
The Water Garden 1909, a dazzling Impressionist landscape, depicts a blossoming Japanese water garden in East Hampton, New York. In this painting, Hassam reiterates his passion for recording vibrant colours and light effects en plein air in a flower-filled landscape, one of his favourite subjects.
Hassam first visited East Hampton in 1898 at the invitation of his friend, the painter Ruger Donoho, who moved there in 1890. The picturesque town — settled in 1648 by English Puritan immigrants from the Massachusetts Bay Colony — resembled many of his preferred New England coastal retreats. It possessed colonial architecture and breathtaking beaches that appealed to Hassam, an avid swimmer. Perhaps most importantly, the village was home to a burgeoning art colony.
Japanese displays at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1894 California Midwinter Exposition in San Francisco stimulated a fascination with Eastern culture, and inspired several of East Hampton’s affluent residents to cultivate Japanese water gardens in the region’s marshy landscape.
The garden represented here is almost certainly that of Mrs Lorenzo G Woodhouse, who installed a four-acre water garden next to her estate, Greycroft, on Hunting Lane, just one block from Donoho’s residence. In 1915, the Woodhouse Water Garden was included in the volume Beautiful Gardens of America, in which the author noted that it:. . . is considered the best piece of work of its kind in the country. It is wonderfully composed with natural pools and streams, tea-houses and rustic bridges suggestive of Japanese art.
