Childe Hassam, Yankee Impressionist Quiz

Answer: Frederick

His original middle name, Childe, came from an uncle of his; he later dropped the "Frederick" and was known as "Childe".

Answer: Dorchester, Mass.

Dorchester today is part of Boston, which Hassam painted in many of his early canvases. He was an athlete in his youth and he boasted of swimming Dorchester Bay and punching out other kids.

Answer: True

Hassam's mother, Rosa Delia Hawthorne, was part of the family where Salem's great author came from.

Answer: English

His father Frederick, whom Hassam was originally named for, was a Boston cutlery seller who descended from a 17th-century Englishman named Horsham (the distortion came later).

Answer: draftsmanship

Hassam quit high school when 17 and became a draftsman in a Boston wood-engraving shop. By his early 20's he'd illustrated "Harper's" and "Scribner's" magazines and took art classes.

Answer: a crescent moon

Hassam looked Middle Eastern with his eyes and swarthiness, so he playfully encouraged thinking on this part. The moon later evolved into a mere slash.

Answer: Muley

"Muley" came from Muley Abul Hassan, a 15th-century sultan of Grenada, related in Irving's "Tales of the Alhambra". The name comes from the Arabic for "lord, master". Again, Hassam was playfully posing as a Middle Easterner.

Answer: Kathleen Maud Doane

She was a family friend he courted for many years before finally marrying. Their marriage lasted 51 years. Hassam once called her his "business manager, legal adviser and wife all in one". She also modelled for him in his early paintings.

Answer: three

Like many American artists in the mid-1880's, Hassam went to Paris to study art. His early paintings of Boston were often in the rain, which he loved. But after a negative review in a Boston paper, he turned to Impressionism and gave his paintings a sense of air and light.

Answer: Renoir

Hassam never heard of Renoir, but looking at the many canvases the Frenchman left behind inspired Hassam to try his hand at this style.

Answer: New York City

While painting many scenes in New York, Hassam also painted open-air landscapes in Provincetown, Gloucester, the Maine coast and the Isle of Shoals in New Hampshire, many of them being his most beautiful works.

Answer: Trinity Church

Hassam snubbed the "cottages" of the rich (still there in Newport, of course!) for a view of Newport harbor and catboats anchored there with the Church in the background. (The tower, first thought to be of Viking origin, inspired Longfellow's "The Skeleton in Armor")

Answer: Celia Thaxter

Thaxter was a popular poet in the early 20th century, and also owned an inn on New Hampshire's Appledore Island. Some of Hassam's best works were of her garden. Lowell, Doolitle (who wrote under her initials "H.D.") and Teasdale never owned inns.

Answer: American flags

It was 1916 and America entered WW1, so Hassam showed his patriotism by painting flags on a building wall in Manhattan during the Fourth of July. Once a New York policeman collared him on suspicion of being a German spy. But Hassam praised the errant cop for his watchfulness!

Answer: 1859-1935

Hassam was born before the Civil War and lived through the era of Whistler, Monet and others into the time of Hopper, Marsh and other realist painters of the Depression. But his works remains the finest examples of French Impressionism applied to the American scene.