Nymph Bathing by Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam
1859-1935 | American

Nymph Bathing

Signed and dated “Childe Hassam 1904” (lower left)
Oil on board

Considered by many to be America’s foremost Impressionist painter, Childe Hassam composed his tranquil and intimate oil, Nymph Bathing, in the early years of the 20th century. The creation of the artwork aligns with a period of Hassam’s career when the artist’s palette was transforming, matching ever closer with the pale and pastel hues of French Impressionists like Claude Monet. Even the subject—a nude nymph—represents a greater alignment with the Impressionist project as showing nature at its best. With Hassam’s signature brushwork and attention to color, this composition is a dreamlike vision, serene and sensuous.

Hassam's mastery extends beyond his renowned landscape expertise in this work, demonstrating his exceptional command of form, light and color. The composition achieves remarkable balance through careful placement: the nude figure is positioned to the right, captured in the intimate moment of entering a pond. The subject's classical contrapposto stance reveals graceful, curving lines that harmonize with the water's reflective surface. These elegant elements are counterbalanced by the robust presence of a towering tree, its spreading canopy anchoring the left side of the canvas. The interplay between the figure's luminous skin tones and the water's ethereal qualities creates a sophisticated dialogue of light across the composition.

Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Childe Hassam began his artistic career as a freelance illustrator, working for national publications such as Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s Monthly and The Century. His first solo exhibition of watercolors took place in Boston in 1883, and he quickly catapulted onto the international scene, winning a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. The year before the present work was created, he received the Webb Prize from the Society of American Artists for another landscape painted at Gloucester. Hassam would receive numerous other awards throughout his career, most notably the Gold Medal for Distinguished Services to Fine Art from the American Dealers Association.

Hassam depicted a way of life characteristic of both American and French society, and his work elucidates a critical chapter in American art history. Today, his work resides in the Oval Office of the White House and in numerous important museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.

Dated 1904

Canvas: 6“ high x 5” wide (15.24 x 12.70 cm)
Frame: 16 1/4“ high x 15” wide x 1 3/4“ deep (41.28 cm x 38.10 cm x 4.45 cm)

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Provenance:
Colonel C.E.S. Wood, Rutland, Oregon & Los Gatos, CA (possibly a gift from the artist)
Hirschl & Adler Gallery, NYC, Mid 1980s
Sotheby's, Important American Paintings, May 1990, Lot 163
Private Collection, NYC, acquired from the above
M.S. Rau, New Orleans

Exhibited:
San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1926-27, no. 80
San Francisco Art Museum, n.d.
Jackson, Mississippi, Mississippi Museum of Art, Collectors' Choice, November 1982-January 1983

Literature:
This painting will be included in Stuart Feld and Kathleen Burnside's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.