Rainy Day, Boston

In 1885 Childe Hassam and his wife lived at 282 Columbus Avenue in Boston’s South End, further down the same avenue from this corner, where it meets Appleton Street. Years later he remembered what drew him to it: “The street was all paved in asphalt, and I used to think it very pretty when it was wet and shining.” Two years earlier he had travelled in Europe and seen Paris, rebuilt under Baron Haussmann with long, wide boulevards, and this is his Boston seen with that eye. The foreground is left almost empty, just wet pavement, and the street plunges away the way a camera lens would frame it. He blurred the horses’ legs on purpose, to catch them moving. Far down the avenue, in the mist, stands the tower of the Boston and Providence railroad station at Park Square.