Place Centrale and Fort Cabanas, Havana, 1895

  • Childe Hassam, American, 1859-1935

Oil on canvas

  • Unframed: 21 1/4 × 26 1/4 inches (54 × 66.7 cm)
  • 32 1/2 × 37 1/2 × 1 7/8 inches (82.6 × 95.3 × 4.8 cm)

City of Detroit Purchase

11.5

On View

  • American, Level 2, West

Department

American Art before 1950

In 1895 Hassam sailed on a pleasure trip from New York to Cuba aboard a friend’s yacht. On his arrival in Havana, he immediately made studies of Fort Cabanas and other colorful subjects. Taken from a high vantage point—the view from his hotel—Place Centrale describes the palpable heat of a tropical noon. The painting incorporates many of the techniques of Hassam’s European impressionist colleagues: spontaneous brushwork and broken colors, a cropped viewpoint, and unexpected angles of vision. Barely visible among the typically impressionist blue shadows of the trees are a number of sketchily rendered figures.

Signed and dated, lower right: Childe Hassam | Habana 1895

Inscribed, lower right: Childe Hassam | Habana 1895

1911-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Burroughs, Clyde. "Contemporary American Art: Childe Hassam." Bulletin of the DMA 7, 3 (July 1913): pp. 54-55 (ill.). Henshaw, Julia. Detroit Institute of Arts: A Visitor's Guide. Detroit, 1995, pp. 77 (ill.). Galpin, Amy. In the Mind's Eye: Landscapes of Cuba. Exh. cat., Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum FIU. Lewes, 2022, p. 97, cat. 32 (ill.).

Childe Hassam, Place Centrale and Fort Cabanas, Havana, 1895, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, City of Detroit Purchase, 11.5.