Etching, 1920. 250x357 mm; 9 3/4x14 inches, full margins. Signed with the artist's cypher and inscribed "imp" in pencil, lower right. A superb, richly-inked impression of this very scarce, important etching, with strong contrasts and selective wiping of the ink on the plate.
Hassam spent most of his summers outside New York and first visited East Hampton in 1898, where he would return fruquently, ultimately moving there and buying a home in 1919. The historic, tree-lined streets of the Hamptons provided him with the vistas of contemporary life that he represented without nostalgia, drenched in light and shadows. In this etching from 1920, depicting the Lion Gardiner house in Easthampton, the figure in the foreground, Uncle David Gardiner, was a local descendant of the original owner and the current occupant when Hassam etched him standing among the elms on his property in October of that year. Cortissoz/Clayton 159.
