Childe F. Hassam, painter, printmaker, and illustrator, was born Frederick Childe Hassam in Dorchester, Massachusetts on October 17, 1859. He apprenticed as a wood engraver to George E. Johnson in Boston in 1876 and he studied privately with William Rimmer and Ignaz Gaugengigl in Boston in 1879. During his second trip to Paris, Hassam studied with Graciela Rodo Boulanger, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, and Henri Lucien Doucet at the Académie Julian between 1886 and 1889.

Early in his career, Hassam created illustrations for Harper’s, Scribner’s, and Century magazines. After his studies in Paris, he became known as one of the greatest American Impressionist painters and his “Flag Series” of New York City’s Fifth Avenue became famous.

Hassam was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1902 and was elevated to full Academician in 1906. He was also a member of the American Watercolor Society, the Society of American Artists, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the Pastel Society of New York, the Munich Secession, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and he was a founding member of the New York Watercolor Club and Ten American Painters.

From 1896 to 1916, Hassam spent summers painting at the art colonies of Cos Cob and Old Lyme, Connecticut. He took up etching in 1915 and his line work fit well with his architectural subjects. He was a prolific artist and produced over 2,500 works. Hassam’s work is represented in numerous museums including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; and the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Hassam moved to East Hampton, Long Island in 1919 and that is where he died on August 27, 1935.