Description
In Back of the Old House, Frederick Childe Hassam builds a focused image around the subject identified by the work’s name. The composition develops through the placement of its dominant shapes and quieter intervals, giving the subject both clarity and room to breathe.
Color and light work with the underlying design, expressing Frederick Childe Hassam’s distinctive sense of pictorial order. This interplay of dominant shapes and restrained passages allows the image to remain clear without flattening its atmosphere. The result is an image whose mood and structure become richer as the viewer notices the connections between its larger and smaller passages.
A hand-painted oil reproduction carries these visual relationships into layered pigment and visible brushwork on canvas. The result combines the accessibility of a reproduction with the texture and individual character expected from a traditionally painted canvas.