Frederick Childe Hassam – The Sonata [1893]

A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935) was a leading American Impressionist throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Sonata is one of his most stunning canvases. Like many of his paintings it combines brilliant colour and brushwork with academic drawing. Clues to the meaning of the painting can be found in the woman’s appearance, the music she is playing and the rose in a bowl on the piano.

The figure of a woman in white was often used by 19th-century painters to symbolize innocence, purity and the nobility of art. One of Hassam’s alternative titles for the painting identifies the music the woman is playing as Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata. Another title ‘The Marechal Niel Rose’ identifies the specific flower that is depicted, a kind of climbing rose with a stem too weak to support its large bloom. Taken together, the beautiful yet fragile-looking woman, the passionate music and the beautiful but vulnerable rose evoke not only passion and exhilaration, but also the emotional hazards of aesthetic experiences.