Childe Hassam : “July Fourteenth, Rue Daunou, 1910” (1910)

July Fourteenth, Rue Daunou captures the energetic atmosphere of the fête nationale on Bastille Day, 1910. Painted from the high vantage of a hotel balcony, the view looks down upon the intersection of the rue de la Paix and rue Daunou, just around the corner from the photographer Nadar’s former studio, where the first Impressionist exhibitions were held.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art observes that “For Hassam, the Fourteenth of July would have recalled the Fourth, prompting him to suffuse his view with a sense of his ardent nationalism and perhaps to exaggerate the number of American flags displayed. The repeated red, white and blue of Old Glory and the French tricolor unify and enliven the composition and suggest shared values.”

The canvas, which has antecedents in Édouard Manet’s Rue Mosnier with Flags and Claude Monet’s Rue Montorgueil, Paris, during the Celebrations of June 30, 1878, anticipates the Flag series he would paint in New York between 1916 and 1919. An avid Francophile, Hassam was an early supporter of the Allied cause in Europe, and contributed several of these works to the war relief in exchange for Liberty Bonds.