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American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art
Museum
11/17/2001 - 1/20/2002
American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American
Art Museum features 52 luminous works by such seminal artists as
Mary Cassatt, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, Abbott Thayer,
John Twachtman, and Thomas Wilmer Dewing. On view at the Norton
Museum of Art from November 17, 2001 to January 20, 2001, these late
nineteenth - and early twentieth-century paintings of dreamy
landscapes, lush garden scenes, and portraits of women as both
objects of beauty and catalysts for changing cultural roles reveal
Impressionism's capacity for elegance, as well as, for social
commentary.
American Impressionism is one of eight exhibitions in Treasures to
Go, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, touring the nation
through 2002.The Principal Financial Group® is a proud partner in
presenting these treasures to the American people. The local
presentation of this exhibition is generously funded in part by the
Norton Museum's Priscilla and John Richman Endowment for American
Art.
Impressionism was a revolutionary style that began in France in the
1860s, developed by young artists weary of a conservative realism
based on academic rules. Americans were among the first to embrace
their new approach to light and color, and by the 1880s,
Impressionism was gaining acceptance among painters and collectors
in the United States. Today, these works are highly prized and
considered one of America's most important contributions to the
history of art.
The exhibition features James McNeill Whistler's Valparaiso Harbor
(1866), a startlingly abstract seascape. Whistler, an expatriate and
bohemian, moved in a circle of advanced artists in France and
England. Quixotic and mysterious, in 1866 he abruptly decided to
travel to Chile to observe a rebellion there. His veiled, indistinct
views of the harbor at dawn and dusk announced a new kind of
landscape, which he later named "nocturnes." John Twachtman adopted
Whistler's ideas concerning the suggestive landscape. Of Twachtman's
five paintings in the exhibition, three present nature's various
seasons and moods. Mary Cassatt was another pioneer who left the
United States to establish a career abroad. Spanish Dancer Wearing a
Lace Mantilla (1873) shows Cassatt's interest in the "exotic" people
of Seville. Four years later, she met Edgar Degas, who introduced
her to the circle of French impressionists. The Caress (1902)
combines impressionism's palette with the mother and child subject
that became her hallmark.
The exhibition includes six major canvases by Childe Hassam, one of
America's greatest champions of Impressionism. In Celia Thaxter in
Her Garden (1892) Hassam portrays his friend amid a tumult of
blossoms near her home on the Isles of Shoals. The South Ledges,
Appledore (1913) is one other view of the island, but from some two
decades later. Tanagra (The Builders, New York) of 1918, and
Maréchal Niel Roses (1919) depict elegant women in interiors, each
an emblem of both tradition and modern life.
In 1887, Theodore Robinson and Willard Metcalf helped establish an
artists' colony in the French village of Giverny, which was the home
of Claude Monet. Three rare paintings by Robinson and two Metcalf
landscapes reflect their interest in the French master, whose name
has come to be synonymous with Impressionism. Henry Ossawa Tanner
borrows Monet's signature subject for his Haystacks (about 1930), a
late tribute to Monet by this African American artist, who lived in
France for almost three decades.
The exhibition also includes key examples by John White Alexander,
Frank Benson, Robert Blum, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Dewing,
Maria Oakey Dewing, Daniel Garber, Birge Harrison, George Hitchcock,
Richard Miller, Maurice Prendergast, Abbott Thayer and Dwight Tryon,
among others. Each invented a style that captured the freshness of
the Impressionist movement.
More than half of the paintings in the exhibition are from two major
gifts to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Seventeen paintings
were among a 1909-11 donation of William T. Evans, a New Yorker, who
was a friend and supporter of many of the artists. In 1929, John
Gellatly, another New York collector, donated his collection,
including eighteen of the paintings on view.
In preparation for the tour, the Smithsonian American Art Museum
acquired fine period frames for several artworks that were
previously in modern reproduction frames. Frederick Carl Frieseke's
Nude Seated at Her Dressing Table (1909), a homage to Renoir, and
Childe Hassam's Ponte Santa Trinita (1897), showing the famous
bridge in Florence designed by Michelangelo, are now in gilded
period frames. Canvases by Arthur Wesley Dow, Robert Reid, Henry
Ossawa Tanner and John Twachtman also were reframed in period
surrounds by the New York firm of Eli Wilner & Co.
To accompany the exhibition, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has
published an illustrated gift book, American Impressionism:
Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with
Watson-Guptill Publications, a division of BPI Communications. The
book will feature color illustrations and brief discussions of the
individual art treasures in the exhibition. This handsome
publication will be available in the Museum Store.
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The Norton Museum
of Art is a major cultural attraction in Florida.
The Museum is internationally known for its distinguished permanent
collection featuring
19th and 20th century European and American art, Chinese, contemporary art and photography.
From its founding the Norton has been famous for its masterpieces
of 19th century and 20th century painting
and sculpture by European artists such as Brancusi, Gauguin, Matisse,
Miró, Monet, Picasso
and by Americans such as Davis, Hassam, Hopper, Manship, O'Keeffe,
Pollock and Sheeler.
View special exhibitions and attend lectures and exhibition programs
for both children and adults.
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