Art Insight: "At Dusk" by Childe Hassam
A quaint, snowy scene hiding questions on illumination and progress
The glowing dusk embraces two children as they pause to feed the birds on the Boston Common in this 1885 painting by Childe Hassam. This work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston appears as a quaint, calm scene to our modern eyes, but a deeper look reveals changes barreling through American cities at the time and how new technology created both benefits and challenges.
Childe Hassam was the son of a Dorchester hardware merchant, freshly returned from Europe and full of the ideas of Impressionism; the movement created radical new ways of painting, embracing ‘sketches’ of a scene and brighter colors.1 Hassam brought the impressionist focus on daily urban life to America with large canvasses of other growing neighborhoods of Boston, such as Bay Back, the South End, and Park Square. The subject of this painting, the Boston Common, had recently been transformed into a lively business district. The left of the painting shows lines of trolley cars and carriages next to newly built red brick buildings. The separated pedestrian walkway cutting through the scene was one of five created to offer respite from the city’s noisy and dirty thoroughfares.
The painting’s composition showcases Impressionist obsession with light in all its forms. The sunset creates a rosy background while the snow reflects the waning daylight. But one other form of light stands out: electrified streetlights. These streetlights would have just been installed in the Common. Whereas modern eyes may focus on the quaint dress and outmoded transportation, these streetlights and trolleys were highlighting modernity at the time. Artificial light from streetlamps and windows adds depth to the scene and highlights the contrast between the modern city and the calm, fashionable mother and children in the foreground.
Beginning in 1828, Boston used coal gas lamps as the main illumination in major city squares and homes. However, in 1882, the city first installed electric street lamps in Scollay Square, now known as Government Center, about a half a mile from the Boston Common.2 Electric streetlights took off quickly in U.S. cities, with “virtually every city using it by 1890,” making American cities internationally known for their bright lights.3
Electric lamps were a superior product to coal gas on several dimensions. Electric light was stronger and covered a larger area than the small puddles of light provided by gas lamps. Electrification also brought health benefits. Coal gas lamps carried flammable gas through the city in pipes, increasing explosion risks. For example, there were seven explosions reported in London and two in Paris between 1819 and 1823. Moreover, gas lines created fear and fervent debate from a social perspective because they broke a separation between industrial and social spaces.4
Even more salient to the public, gas brought with it strong smells of “the exhalations of the sulphur springs, the volatile poison of mine gas, and the harmful vapors which depopulate every year the surroundings of marshes.” Since coal gas formed over thousands of years, a popular belief espoused that burning it exposed the population to “ancestral putridity.” This vague theory notwithstanding, regular exposure to coal gasses caused well-known diseases in the mining population. We now know that even small quantities of gas can be toxic because of carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide.5 Electrification removed explosion risks and threats to respiratory health.
However, electrification brought economic tensions and a new relationship with light. A recent economic study of Boston in 1885 found that streetcar electrification altered which parts of the city were quickly accessible. Newly electrified street cars concentrated customer traffic, which grew larger businesses and hurt sole proprietorships, i.e. “Mom and Pop” stores.6 Hassam’s piece illustrates this rapid urbanization bustling commercial traffic on the left with in front of new red brick rowhouses.
Hassam’s work captures how electrification dramatically transformed artists’ relationships with light. Electric streetlights were brighter and stronger, so outdoor scenes were suddenly well-illuminated. In the studio, daylight conditions could be re-created at any time. As a result, artists wrestled with the evolving meaning of light and its place in art. “Nocturnes,” paintings focused on dusk or evening scenes, surged in popularity at the turn of the century. Nocturnes often evoked a contemplative feel, as in this work. The bustle of the city pauses as the mother and children patiently feed the sparrows. The electrified streetlights are sharp, arresting splots of paint compared with the warm rosy hues of the setting sun or the gentle luminosity of the snow.7 Hassam uses the new electric light not just as a subject, but as a tool to shape mood, depth, and meaning.
As the warm glow of dusk takes prominence in both the title and the visual composition, Hassam invites us to find harmony between technological advances and natural rhythms. Electrification may even be creating this quiet moment by increasing the safety of an evening walk. “At Dusk” explores both sides of modernization and progress; new technology punctuates our everyday like the pinpricks of light in the distance, but humanity still yearns to slow down and connect like the unhurried children watching the birds. How can we use the bright lights of progress to enable, rather than compete with, moments of quiet wonder?
Special thanks to Jason Najjar for his commentaries on art and edits.
Hassam, Childe. At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight). 1885–86, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Accessed 30 Dec. 2025. Adapted from Elliot Bostwick Davis et al., American Painting, MFA Highlights (Boston: MFA Publications, 2003).
City of Boston Archives and Records Management Division, Street Lighting History collection, “Guide to the Street Lighting History Collection” prepared by Marta Crilly. Collection No 5030.003.
Shiman, Daniel R., “Explaining the Collapse of the British Electrical Supply Industry in the 1880s: Gas versus Electric Lighting Prices” Business and Economic History, Vol. 22, No. 1, Papers presented at the thirty-ninth annual meeting of the Business History Conference (Fall 1993), pp. 318-327 (10 pages).
Interesting sidenote- gas seems like a substitute to electricity, but because electricity provided higher levels of light in public spaces, people became used to these higher illumination levels. Since electricity was not yet available in homes, consumers increased their use of gas to match their new expectations. Gas ended up being a complement in the residential market!
Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste, “The Gas Lighting ControversyTechnological Risk, Expertise, and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London” Journal of Urban HistoryVolume 33, Issue 5, Jul 2007, Pages729 - 755.
Megas, I-F, JP Beier, and G Grieb. The History of Carbon Monoxide Intoxication. Medicina, vol. 57, no. 5, 2021, p. 400. MDPI.
You, Wei. The Economics of Speed: The Electrification of the Streetcar System and the Decline of Mom-and-Pop Stores in Boston, 1885–1905 American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 13, no. 4, October 2021, pp. 285–324.
Valance, Hélène. “Nocturne: Night in American Art, 1890-1917” Yale University Press, 2018.