Old Toll Bridge, Stratham, N. H. 1915

Curator: There’s something so melancholic about this piece, this etching of the Old Toll Bridge in Stratham, New Hampshire by Childe Hassam. It feels like a memory fading at the edges. Editor: Fading perhaps, but also revealing. Look at the density of the lines describing the wooden structure, the clear labor involved in building and maintaining such a bridge. Curator: Yes, that’s the contrast, isn’t it? The bridge itself, so solid and functional, rendered with such delicate, almost hesitant lines. I wonder what Hassam was thinking about as he etched it? Editor: Probably the same thing as the carpenters who built the thing, keeping folks moving, commerce flowing. The bridge as infrastructure, as connection. Curator: It’s interesting how he chose to depict it with that almost ghostly reflection in the water. It softens the whole image, adds a layer of dreaminess. Editor: Or perhaps it’s a reminder of the bridge's physical connection to the river, the material reality that sustains it. Curator: I see it more as a meditation on time, on what remains and what disappears. Editor: Maybe it’s both. Bridges join and allow passage, but also represent points of crossing, of choice.