Church at Old Lyme

Hassam first visited Old Lyme in 1903 and stayed at the boardinghouse of Florence Griswold, who furnished visiting artists not only with room and board but with studio space as well. In addition, she offered her walls as a provisional gallery. Hassam depicted Old Lyme's most famous edifice, the First Congregational Church, seven times, in oil, pastel and etching. In the three versions in oil (dated 1903, 1905, and this one, 1906), the angle on the church shifts in a 180-degree arc, as though the building were a grande dame proffering her best side for a portrait.

To Hassam, the Connecticut village was emblematic of America's rich heritage. His close-up views of the white church steeple, set against dazzlingly clear blue skies and encircled by native elms (symbolic of the nation's strength), became the stuff of picture postcards. Hassam often spoke of his New England roots and made no secret of his dismay at the increasing waves of immigration, which he felt diluted the dominance of the United States' historically Anglo-Saxon majority.