The Dragon Cloud, Old Lyme

Childe Hassam's 1903 Dragon Cloud at Old Lyme is a work from his engagement with the Connecticut impressionist colony that had formed around Florence Griswold's boarding house in Old Lyme. The Old Lyme colony was the most significant American Impressionist gathering outside of Cos Cob, attracting painters who sought to apply the French Impressionist approach to the particular light and landscape of New England. Hassam was the dominant figure of American Impressionism, and his cloud studies from Old Lyme reflect both the plein-air practice at the colony's core and a more specifically atmospheric interest in weather effects over the Connecticut landscape. The New Britain Museum preserves this as a document of the Old Lyme colony's early years.

The dramatic cloud — a dragon-shaped formation over the Connecticut landscape — is handled with the broken, luminous touch that was Hassam's primary pictorial achievement. The sky's tonal complexity, from deep blue through the illuminated cloud mass to hazy horizon, is built through varied color temperature and paint application that captures the instability of atmospheric weather.