The Bather

Arguably America’s best regarded Impressionist painter, Childe Hassam would spend his summers in New England, away from the bustle of New York City, seeking not only personal respite but also new subject matter. On the island of Appledore off the coast of Maine, he concentrated on the craggy coastline and beautiful flower gardens, while in the Connecticut artist colonies of Old Lyme and Cos Cob, he focused on the buildings and landscape. These countryside experiences inspired his dreamlike subjects of the early 1900s, such as The Bather, in which Hassam incorporates a classical figure into his quintessential Impressionist landscape.

Hassam’s nude bathers uniquely bridge antiquity with modernity, his nymph-like figures posed within idyllic landscapes painted with vivacious Impressionistic brushwork and exquisitely bright color. The artist explored the bather theme in great depth during this period; in fact, it was his chosen subject for several commissions and for one of the largest paintings he ever executed, June of 1905, in the collection of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, a painting he considered to be one of his masterpieces. He painted the subject on a door of the Florence Griswold Museum in Connecticut in 1903 and again for a notable mural commission in 1904 for the Wood Library in Oregon, a 12-foot long panel of which is now in the collection of the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester.

Hassam’s keen awareness for the effects of light and atmosphere are on full display in the present example, his skilled use of color implying warm sunlight and his kinetic brushwork creating a palpable breeziness. The Bather represents a beautiful example of one of the artist’s favorite themes among the many subjects he mastered during his celebrated career.