Childe Hassam depicts New York’s Fifth Avenue decorated with American and Allied flags for a patriotic celebration during the final year of World War I. During the war, he completed more than thirty oil and watercolor paintings of New York’s flag-draped streets. Hassam was already interested in modern city subjects by 1886, when he went to Paris as a student and came into direct contact with Impressionism. In this watercolor, Hassam left his light pencil under-drawing visible and filled in the scene with overlapping dabs and blocks of color, capturing the prismatic effect of bright sunlight illuminating a bustling crowd.

Adapted from

Sue Canterbury, label copy, 2018.

• Childe Hassam, Biography
  Learn more about Childe Hassam at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.