Erica Hirshler's guest appearances

Erica Hirshler

Boston Athenæum

Talks, Symposia, and Lecture Series

Thomas Hart Benton

John Singer Sargent

Sarah McBride

Frederick Douglass

Stephen Kinzer

Richard Bell

Sarah Parcak

Mary Norris

Robert Gould

Robert Shiller

Nina Campbell

George Lucas

Theodore Roosevelt

Hieronymus Bosch

Carl Zimmer

OwlTail

Childe Hassam

January 19, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum.In this talk, leading American art specialist Erica E. Hirshler will share excerpts of her vivid account of one of Boston's best-loved paintings, Childe Hassam’s “At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight)”. She will discuss with audience members the context of Childe Hassam's 1880s city scene. With its rosy rust tones, intimate familial vignette, and quiet expanse of snow-laden park, today “At Dusk” seems to encourage reflection and represent a decidedly old-fashioned city. Yet Hirshler will reveal the ways in which the painting visually signaled the emerging modern city, from subtleties about women's place in the urban landscape to the uproarious clang of the streetcars that would have been heard on the busiest block in Boston. She will discuss her carefully researched and elegantly presented book, which offers a new perspective to those already acquainted with the painting as well as an evocative look at a singular moment in Boston history.

January 19, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum.<br><br>In this talk, leading American art specialist Erica E. Hirshler will share excerpts of her vivid account of one of Boston's best-loved paintings, Childe Hassam’s “At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight)”. She will discuss with audience members the context of Childe Hassam's 1880s city scene. With its rosy rust tones, intimate familial vignette, and quiet expanse of snow-laden park, today “At Dusk” seems to encourage reflection and represent a decidedly old-fashioned city. Yet Hirshler will reveal the ways in which the painting visually signaled the emerging modern city, from subtleties about women's place in the urban landscape to the uproarious clang of the streetcars that would have been heard on the busiest block in Boston. She will discuss her carefully researched and elegantly presented book, which offers a new perspective to those already acquainted with the painting as well as an evocative look at a singular moment in Boston history.

Erica Hirshler, “Childe Hassam: At Dusk: Boston Common at Twilight”

Erica Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has written and lectured widely on American paintings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly on American impressionism and the Boston School. Her most recent book, already in its second printing, Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting, examines the history of Sargent's masterpiece, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. Hirshler also organized and wrote the accompanying books for the exhibitions A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870--1940 (2001) and Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist (1995). She has contributed to exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts and other institutions, among them Americans in Paris, 1860--1900 (2006) and Sargent and the Sea (2009).

"Looking at John Singer Sargent " with Erica Hirshler