Nurses in the Park

Childe Hassam's 'Nurses in the Park' (1889) belongs to his period of increasingly American Impressionism following his return from Paris — the park scene with its fashionably dressed nurses and their charges translating the democratic public space subjects he had engaged in Paris into an American urban setting. The park nurse was a characteristic figure of upper-middle-class American urban life in the Gilded Age, and Hassam's treatment of this subject within the Impressionist vocabulary he had developed in Paris created a distinctly American version of the French public park painting.

Hassam renders the park scene with his emerging American Impressionist technique — broken brushwork capturing the outdoor light's effect on figures, foliage, and path surfaces. His palette is high-keyed and light-saturated, the American park light clear and bright in a way that differed from the softer Parisian light he had observed during his French sojourn. The figures of nurses and children are integrated within the park environment through the unifying effect of outdoor light.