A Back Road, 1884 (oil on canvas)

Throughout his career, Frederick Childe Hassam made several extended trips to Europe, where he was stimulated by the sights and the many artists he met. A Back Road, completed the year after his first European tour, demonstrates a compositional daring and freedom of brushwork that were still unusual in American art of this period. Inspired by the works of the nineteenth-century French Barbizon School, Hassam emphasized heavy brushstrokes, intense lighting effects, and flatness. During a return visit several years later, Hassam found “a charming old French garden” at Villiers-le-Bel, near Paris. The setting reminded him of Appledore Island, home to his friend the poet Celia Thaxter. Poppies on the Isles of Shoals is one of a number of works painted on Appledore, off the coast of Maine, in the years immediately following his Paris sojourn.