The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Oil painting in blue tones of the Fifth Avenue city street, created with loose flecks of paint. The street cuts diagonally across the painting from our lower right, buildings rising in the upper half and streaks suggesting swarms of people moving through the lower half. Beyond blue, brown and golden yellow fleck the buildings and people closest to us while the crowds thicken towards the back, becoming more of a solid, misty white and blue.

Fifth Avenue

1919

Childe Hassam

(American, 1859–1935)
America
oil on canvas
Framed: 86.4 x 76.2 x 6.4 cm (34 x 30 x 2 1/2 in.); Unframed: 61.3 x 51.5 cm (24 1/8 x 20 1/4 in.); Former: 76.5 x 66.5 x 4.5 cm (30 1/8 x 26 3/16 x 1 3/4 in.)
Anonymous Gift 1952.539
Location: 208 American Gilded Age and Realism

Did You Know?

During World War I, the fiercely nationalistic Hassam was mistakenly arrested for being a German spy.

Description

Childe Hassam was fascinated by bustling Fifth Avenue, the famed Manhattan thoroughfare quickly becoming a popular shopping district around the time he made this painting. His composition features flecks of color and blurred
forms to approximate reflected light and rapid movement. The accelerated pace of modern life is suggested through the street full of streaming traffic, including two green double-decker buses at lower right.
  • 1952-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
  • “A Check List. American Paintings and Water Colors of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Early Twentieth Centuries in the Cleveland Museum of Art.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 60, no. 1 (January 1973): 21–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25152465 Mentioned and reproduced: p. 27, no. 74 www.jstor.org
    Urteaga Loidi, Jesús. Saints in the World: The Adventure of Christian Life. Princeton, NJ: Scepter Publishers, 2002. illus. on cover
    Adams, Henry. What's American about American art?: a gallery tour in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008. Reproduced: front/rear end leaves (detail); p. 108 - 109
  • Cleveland Collects American Art of the Gilded Age. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 23-May 18, 2003).
    American Cities: The Artist's View. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 17, 1989-January 7, 1990).
    American Impressionistic Painting. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (organizer) (July 1-August 12, 1973); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (September 18-November 12, 1973); The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (December 15, 1973-January 31, 1974); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC (March 8-April 29, 1974).
    Washington, D.C., The National Gallery, American Impressionist Painting (1 July-26 August 1973); traveled to New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art (18 September-2 November 1973); to Cincinnati, Cincinnati Art Museum (15 December 1973-31 January 1974); to Raleigh, The North Carolina Museum of Art (8 March-29 April 1974); cat. no. 36, illus. p. 96.
    Childe Hassam: A Retrospective Exhibition. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (organizer) (April 30-August 1, 1965); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA (August 17-September 19, 1965); Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH (September 28-October 31, 1965); The Gallery of Modern Art (November 16-December 19, 1965).
    Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Childe Hassam: A Retrospective Exhibition (30 April-1 August 1965); traveled to Boston, Museum of Fine Arts (17 August-19 September 1965); to Manchester, NH, The Currier Gallery of Art (28 September-31 October 1965); to New York, The Gallery of Modern Art (16 November-19 December 1965); cat. no. 55, illus. p. 34.
    Impressionism and its Roots. University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA (organizer) (November 8-December 6, 1964).
    Iowa City, The University of Iowa Gallery of Art, Impressionism and Its Roots (8 November-6 December 1964), cat. no. 47, illus. p. 29.
    Art: The International Language. The Cleveland Museum of Art (October 2-November 4, 1956).
  • {{cite web|title=Fifth Avenue|url=false|author=Childe Hassam|year=1919|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1952.539