About this work
- *New York Bouquet* is a lithograph from 1917, edition of 93, signed with the artist's cipher in pencil, and is inspired by Hassam's oil painting of the same title.
- It was executed as a lithograph on Shogun paper with a watermark, measuring 27.8 × 15.8 cm.
- Its provenance includes a gift from Mrs. Hassam to the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, subsequently deaccessioned.
- Around this same period, Hassam began a series of "window" paintings, usually featuring a contemplative female model in a flowered kimono before a light-filled curtained or open window.
- Around this time, he renewed his interest in etching and lithography, producing more than 400 of these works during his later career.
*New York Bouquet* presents one of Hassam's most intimate subjects — a lush arrangement of flowers — rendered with the economy and tonal richness that only lithography allows. The vertical format, just over eleven inches tall, compresses the composition into something almost poem-like: blossoms filling the picture plane with restless, clustered energy, their forms built through the soft gradations of crayon on stone rather than the loaded brushstroke of oil. What strikes the eye first is abundance — petals pressing against one another, stem crossing stem — held together by Hassam's instinct for the kind of casual, uncontrived arrangement that feels genuinely observed rather than staged. The narrow proportions give the bouquet a tall, almost columnar presence, as though the flowers are standing at full attention.
The lithograph is directly inspired by Hassam's oil painting of the same title, and sits squarely within the body of interior and domestic work he was producing in New York in 1917. That year Hassam was deep into his celebrated window series — intimate scenes usually featuring a contemplative female model in a flowered kimono before a light-filled window — and these scenes were popular with museums and quickly snapped up. *New York Bouquet*, stripped to its floral essence, reads as a distillation of that same sensibility: the indoor world made luminous. Hassam had renewed his serious engagement with lithography and etching around this period, ultimately producing more than 400 prints across his later career. The 1917 date places this work at the exact confluence of his printmaking ambitions and his wartime productivity — he was especially prolific and energetic between 1910 and 1920.
The edition ran to just 93 impressions, giving it the rarity of a work made for discerning collectors rather than broad distribution.
On a wall, *New York Bouquet* rewards a quiet room — a study,
