The Isles of Shoals 1912

Childe Hassam painted "The Isles of Shoals" with oils in a square format. Look how Hassam builds form, almost blocky, with a flurry of strokes of contrasting blues and whites. The texture of the rocks is built up with thick paint, gestural marks of white and light blue that meet the flat blue of the sea. Zoom in on the woman in the white dress. The painting almost dissolves into abstraction here: dabs of white, green, and grey coalesce into a figure. Hassam is using the materiality of paint to evoke the feeling of a specific place, light, and moment. The woman's gaze seems to mimic ours, as we look out and contemplate the vastness of the ocean. This reminds me of Fairfield Porter’s landscapes: the way he flattens space, and uses a bright, high-key palette to build a sense of place. Just like with Porter, this kind of painting embraces the immediacy of perception; the more you look at it, the more you see the process of its making.