Volume 51, Number 12 · July 15, 2004
Street Arab
By John Updike
Childe Hassam, American Impressionist
Catalog of the exhibition edited by H. Barbara Weinberg
an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 10–September 12, 2004
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 424 pp., $65.00; $45.00 (paper)
Childe Hassam is a curious name, suggesting exotic antecedents; in truth, 'Hassam' is a corruption of the English surname 'Horsham,' and the future painter was named Frederick after his father and Childe (meaning a youth of noble birth, as in Byron's Childe Harold) after an uncle. Frederick, born in 1859, early disposed of his given name—his earliest watercolors are signed 'F. Childe Hassam'—and accepted from friends the nickname 'Muley,' after Muley Abul Hassan, one of the potentates of Granada described in Washington Irving's popular The Alhambra.
Review, 2725 words
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