By the time he moved to New York in 1889, where this image is set, Childe Hassam’s watercolors had become the most advanced and sophisticated aspect of his art. In the previous decade he had, like many young American artists, traveled to Europe, where he studied in Paris and became well versed in the progressive art movements of the day. He embraced a form of Impressionism, with its attendant loose brushwork and emphasis on light and color, but with readable, well-defined subjects. In New York, Hassam reveled in painting the urban atmosphere that he observed on the streets or at various vantage points from his studios near Fifth Avenue, which he proclaimed had no rival in Paris. Hassam’s was a romantic vision of the city at the turn of the century, and one that avoided depictions of the city’s poorer neighborhoods (something that the more progressive artists of the Ashcan School would soon be portraying). In his urban paintings and watercolors, the artist typically captured genteel, well-dressed New Yorkers, strolling or in horse-drawn carriages, along crowded commercial thoroughfares by day and night, when they were well lit by the electric lights that had only been recently introduced. In this small watercolor, Hassam portrays not only the look but also the atmosphere of a rain-soaked New York City street. His virtuoso handling of transparent watercolor washes, with selective touches of white and yellow opaque pigment, strength-ens the illusion of artificial light as it reflects off the damp pavement and sky. (K. Breuer)