The Fourth of July 1916
By: Frederick Childe Hassam (1859–1935)
Painted: 1916
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 36 in. x 26.13 in.
Massed dozens of American flags on Fifth Avenue ripple in the wind of a fleecy blue-and-white day in The Fourth of July, 1916 (The Greatest Display of the American Flag Ever Seen in New York, Climax of the Preparedness Parade in May).
It was after Preparedness Day that Hassam, one of several American artists who supported the Allied cause with their art, began the approximately 30 flag paintings that exist.
They "became his most significant late work," according to Ilene Susan Fort, associate curator of American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
During this period, did flags became as important a motif to Hassam as waterlilies were to Claude Monet?
"Yes, they are his last great statement, just as the waterlilies were with Monet."[Excerpts from Louise Sweeney's report in The Christian Science Monitor, May 27 1988, reviewing the National Gallery of Art's The Flag Paintings of Hassam exhibition.