The Lion Gardiner House, Easthampton

The celebrated American Impressionist Childe Hassam made his first etchings in 1898 but only began to focus seriously on the medium in 1915. The artist bought a property in East Hampton in 1919 and then explored local subjects in his art, among them the historic house seen here. Working in monochrome encouraged a new emphasis on surface patterning and Hassam weaves strking visual effects from shadows, leaves and branches, demonstrating a new expressionism The Lion Gardiner House, shielded by a picket fence and ancient trees, had been built in 1835 and named after a seventeenth-century English settler and major property owner in the area. When Hassam depicted it, the building belonged to a descendant, David Gardiner. In the major hurricane of 1938 it would be severely damaged and then replaced by a Renaissance style stone mansion.