Moonlight, the Old House 1906

Childe Hassam’s ‘Moonlight, the Old House’ shimmers with thick strokes of blues and whites. It makes you think about how it came into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with Hassam; I can imagine him standing outside that old house with his canvas, squinting to see. Painting in the dark is hard! But he has these spots of yellow from the windows, and the way he’s used such visible marks makes it easy to imagine his hand moving quickly, trying to capture the moment before the light shifts. The texture is almost fuzzy, like he's trying to capture the ephemeral nature of light and shadow. That single gesture, that daub of white on the roof – it communicates a feeling of quiet, like a whispered secret under the moonlight. It makes me think of other painters of his era, of Whistler and the Barbizon School. They were all in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas across time, inspiring each other. Painting embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.