CHILDE HASSAM
The Lion Gardiner House, East Hampton.
Etching, 1920. 253x357 mm; 10x14 inches, full margins. Signed with the artist's cypher and inscribed "imp" in pencil, lower right. A superb, richly-inked impression with strong contrasts.Hassam (1859-1935) spent most of his summers outside New York and first visited East Hampton in 1898, where he would return often until moving there and buying a home in 1919. The historic, tree-lined streets of the Hamptons provided him with the vistas of everyday life that he sought to capture without nostalgia, drenched in light and shadows. In this etching from 1920, depicting the Lion Gardiner house in East Hampton, the figure in the foreground, Uncle David Gardiner, was a local descendant of the original owner and the current occupant when Hassam etched him standing among the elms in October of that year. The etching dates from the height of Hassam's career as one of the foremost American Impressionist artists. Cortissoz/Clayton 159.