Lecture: Hasome, an impressionist painter: Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class. Prefessor: In our studies of impressionism, we've already seen how the outdoors. Em ... , how outdoor settings and natural subjects figure prominently in European impressionist paintings of the 19th century. Nature and natural landscapes were key to the artist's new resource of light and color which places an emphasis on the artist's impressions, what the artist actually saw in different light conditions rather than on idealized duende of places and scenes. But these are the only subjects we see in the paintings of Child Hasome. Hasome was one of the most important impressionist painters in the United States. He was unique for ... em ... his body of work represents a really interesting dichotomy of both rural and urban elements. Now, don't get me wrong, like the best majority of impressionists, Hasome did paint many rural outdoor things. But the city, especially New York city goes into many of his work too. You see, imagine impressionism developed during the industrial age, a very dynamic time in US history, the late 1800s, early 1900s. Everything was changing, how people live, where they live, their job. Increasing numbers of people from throughout the world immigrated here to fill the new factory job, and naturally, they flocked to the big cities where those jobs were. So the cities grew very noisy and crowded. Most of the early impressionists reacted to this by using an art to counter the busy urban environment. In contrast, all these change and emotion, their paintings emphasis nature, peacefulness, and permanent. Many of these artists maintain studios in New York city or Boston, but they summered in the countryside. And these spots were ideal for their open-air style painting, painting outside with natural lighting. Hasome spent most of his summer on Appledore Island. Appledore Island was a popular vacation spot of the east coast. So popular it got almost as crowded as a city. Yet, Hasome's Appledore paintings emphasis solitude, a retreat from urban life. We see flowers, the ocean are inhabitable lucky quiz with human subjects largely absent which is art considering how it might have been surrounded by people. Because back in the city, Hasome did focus on people, his paintings of city life or realistic studies of the relationship between people and the city. The greatest examples are series of paintings made in his New York city studio. Let's have a look at one piece from that series, The Breakfast Room, Winter Morning. As you can see, The Breakfast Room is distinctively urban, it doesn't hide the city. You can make up the traces of tall building, the flat iron building, one of New York first skyscraper and the major feature of the city skyline, uh ... back 1911, when this painting was made. In fact, the flat iron building was considered a symbol of modern rise. So its inclusion in this quiet domestic scene is significant I think, even more significant is how Hasome render it and where. Notice on Hasome ties the interior and exterior elements together. First, there is an implied triangle formed by the woman on the left, the flat iron building in the centre and the bowel of fruit on the right, three corners. By structuring the scene in this way, Hasome links the woman and her immediate environment to the cityscape behind her. Emm ... , you come to see the same thing with color, the blue in the woman's dress is echoed in the flat iron building, and beyond in the flowers, it's the same yellow as the building is at the extreme light. This use of color makes your eye automatically link discreet elements together. Yet, well the city is visible, is also controlled. The buildings and skyline are painted with nuded cool colors while the woman's inward glance and windows keep the focus inside the room, creating a separation from the bustling city outside. So Hasome is econologing the changes of modernity by incorporating the city into a quiet domestic scene but he obscure the flat iron building behind the curtain. In fact, the whole cityscape is murky, suggesting that is the presence of people's personal lives or to be limited. He is probably expressing his own ideas about how society should relate to this new area. Indeed the theories of paintings was directly response to his experience of urban growth and all that is symbolized. He couldn't have painted The Breakfast Room in the rural mid-west. It wouldn't have been the same painting. The nuded city has a source of inspiration.