As for the French Impressionists, he wrote "Even Claude Monet, Sisley, Pissarro and the school of extreme Impressionists do some things that are charming and that will live." Hassam was later called an "extreme Impressionist". His closest contact with a French Impressionist artist occurred when Hassam took over Renoir's former studio and found some of the painter's oil sketches left behind. "I did not know anything about Renoir or care anything about Renoir. I looked at these experiments in pure color and saw it was what I was trying to do myself."