Bailey's Beach, Newport, R.I.

Bailey's Beach in Newport, Rhode Island, was among the most socially exclusive bathing beaches in America, the summer retreat of families like the Vanderbilts and Astors whose Newport 'cottages' defined Gilded Age display. Hassam, who painted Newport repeatedly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, brought his Impressionist technique to a subject that combined the natural beauty of the New England coast with the social pageant of fashionable summer life. This 1901 canvas at the Art Institute of Chicago captures the beach's characteristic combination of bright parasols, light dresses, and brilliant coastal light.

The beach scene is organized as a study in chromatic brilliance: figures in white and pastel against the dazzling light of sand and sea, the parasols providing repeated accents of stronger color. Hassam's broken-color technique is particularly effective here, the short strokes suggesting the scintillating quality of strong sunlight on beach and water simultaneously.