Au Grand Prix de Paris (At the Grand Prix de Paris)
Childe Hassam·1887
Historical Context
Au Grand Prix de Paris (1887) by Childe Hassam depicts the fashionable crowd and atmosphere of Paris's premier horse-racing event, the Grand Prix at Longchamp — one of the great social occasions of the Parisian year. Hassam was a young American painter in Paris during these years, absorbing the French Impressionist influence that would define his mature style, and works like this show him moving from his earlier tonal realism toward a brighter palette and more broken touch. The Grand Prix gathering, with its elegantly dressed crowd under parasols and against the green of the racecourse, was an ideal subject for Impressionist color observation in strong outdoor light.
Technical Analysis
The outdoor crowd scene is handled with a bright, Impressionist-influenced palette, using dabs of color to render the figures and the luminous Paris summer light. Hassam is working toward the broken-touch method he would develop more fully in his mature American Impressionism. The composition captures the festive, mobile quality of the crowd.
