Colonial Quilt 1922

Childe Hassam made this painting of a window, a quilt, and some grapes in his late impressionist style. The paint's pretty thin, but the way he layers all those little strokes – green, yellow, blue – it's like he's building the form right in front of us, bit by bit. Look at the grapes, how they almost vibrate, one dab of dark paint against another. It's not so much about what the grapes *are*, but more about how we see them, how the light hits them, how they sit in that little grey dish. And that quilt! It's got this great, freehand, geometric thing going on, like a proto-abstract painting. Hassam reminds me a bit of Bonnard, that everyday, intimate feeling. But Hassam's got this uniquely American take on it, a certain kind of domestic light. It's a painting that's both here and somewhere else, a little window into another way of seeing.