Harney Desert 

Childe Hassam created this landscape in oils, a traditional medium, to capture the high desert environment. The visible brushstrokes, applied with a loaded brush, give a sense of the artist's active engagement with the canvas. The impasto technique adds texture and depth, evoking the arid, scrubby terrain of the Harney Desert. There’s a directness to the application, a painterly approach that almost seems to prioritize the act of painting itself over precise representation. Hassam was trained in the academic tradition, but he embraced a more modern, impressionistic style. This approach elevates the importance of color and light in capturing the essence of a place. He transforms the desert into an impressionistic field of texture, revealing the amount of work involved in portraying such a vast landscape. Paying attention to the making, the way Hassam laid down each stroke, allows us to appreciate how the artist built up the scene and how the material qualities of paint helped convey the character of the desert.