Sunday Morning, Appledore 1912

Childe Hassam made this watercolour, Sunday Morning, Appledore, sometime in his life. You can see the marks of the brush all over the paper, like the artist was trying to catch a feeling, not just a picture. The way the watercolours pool and bleed into each other—the blues of the sea mingling with the greens of the landscape—it's like watching paint be itself. I love how the rocks in the foreground are rendered with these quick, confident strokes of grey and blue, and then punctuated with touches of ochre. It makes me think of a little dance the artist did with the brush, trying to pin down the light. And those figures in the distance! Just little blobs of ink, but they give the whole scene a sense of life, of people taking in the view just like we are. Hassam, like Whistler, knew how to do so much with so little. It feels like an invitation to see the world with fresh eyes.