Charles River and Beacon Hill

Three pieces of Boston meet in this small canvas from around 1892. On the left runs the Charles River, which divides the city from Cambridge. In the middle rises Beacon Hill, settled in the 18th century and topped by the gold dome of the Massachusetts State House. On the right lies the Back Bay, a fashionable neighbourhood standing on ground that had only recently been made, at the end of a landfill project that took about 40 years. Hassam drew the eye in with a steep plunge into depth and a wide empty foreground, a device French painters such as Gustave Caillebotte had used. Along the embankment he kept what was there at the time, a dirt road, a narrow walkway, a boat landing, and a man in a blue coat at the railing, smoking his pipe. Boston was then debating what to make of its riverfront, and soon afterwards the scene changed, when a concrete promenade about 30 metres wide was built out beyond the sea wall.