Alice Schille

Horse Race, Siena, 1901-10. Watercolor, 9 x 11". Courtesy Perry Nicole Fine Art, Memphis, Tennessee.

Trafalgar Square, London (night), 1909-10. Pastel and watercolor, 12 x 9". Private collection

Nice, 1909-10. Pastel and Watercolor. 10 x 7". Private collection

Alice Schille (1869-1955) was born in Columbus Ohio, and studied in New York and Paris and was influenced by progressive art movements. She was a world traveller, painting throughout the US, Europe, North Africa and Latin America. Her medium of choice was watercolor but she also worked in oils. Her subject matter included still lifes, landscapes, gardens, mothers and children, market and harbor scenes. Her paintings of the working class Jewish and Italian neighborhoods on the Lower East Side are some of the most exciting watercolors ever rendered of urban life in New York.

Schille's work evolved from Tonalist naturalism, through Impressionism and Post-Impressionism (including Pointillism) to include the influence of Fauvism as well as an exploration of the faceting of the Cubist methodology. Her later work also reveals the influence of Rivera and the Mexican muralists. (William H. Gerdts)

Childe Hassam

The Garden in Its Glory, from An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter, Illustrated by Childe Hassam, (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894), Chromolithograph, private collection.

Title Page, An Island Garden

Front Piece of An Island Garden

The White Kimono, 1915 etching, 7 x 11 in. The Hunington Library, San Marino, California.

An American Impressionist painter, Childe Hassam was born in Boston in 1859. He never graduated high school, instead apprenticed with an engraver. He took drawing classes at MIT and became an illustrator and water colorist. In the summer of 1883 Hassam took a 'painting trip' to Europe to study the masters and do some en plein air painting. In 1886, he went to Paris to study more art, in particular: painting and figure drawing. He eventually settled in New York City in 1889 and painted city life and mostly the upper class. Hassam is most famous for his numerous flag paintings most of them done in the heart of NYC near his gallery. In 1919 he moved to East Hampton and died there in 1935 at the age of 75.

Note: These images appeared in the December 2007 issue of American Art Review Magazine.