"A true historical painter ... is one who paints the life he sees about him, and so makes a record of his own epoch." This principle, voiced by the Impressionist Childe Hassam, was heeded by the artists whose contributions are the focus of this volume: the American Impressionists and the Realists of the generation that succeeded them. The authors of the book, which accompanies a major exhibition, illuminate the continuities and differences between American Impressionism and Realism, two movements that are traditionally viewed as merely opposed.They explore the roots of American Impressionism in European art, especially in the French Impressionists' engagement with the contemporary scene. Also elucidated are the evolving responses of both the American Impressionists and Realists to the changing realities of life in the United States at the turn of the century, as the nation shifted rapidly from an agrarian to an increasingly industrialized urban society. In an examination of paintings that represent the country, the city, and the home - the triad of subjects that engaged the artists - these responses are shown to reflect a tension between enthusiasm for the new and a sense of loss of the rural past. Studying a wide range of painters, including John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, John Sloan, William Glackens, and George Bellows, the authors offer new insights into the threads of nationalism, optimism, euphemism, and nostalgia that link the two movements. They demonstrate that these painters of modern life endowed their European-rooted art with a distinctly American inflection and produced a selective register of an energetic nation, revealing a complex commitment to Robert Henri's assertion that "painting is the giving of evidence."The volume brings a new approach to this area of American art history, which has tended to be more descriptive than interpretive: it offers detailed historical and social contexts for the works and movements under consideration as well as penetrating stylistic analyses. Lavish illustrations of the paintings in the exhibition, comparative works and period photographs, a biography of each of the twenty-six artists in the exhibition, a selected bibliography, and an index are included.

American Impressionism and Realism The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915

Arts & Photography

Bolger, Doreen

Curry, David Park

Weinberg, H. Barbara

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915 brings together the appealing works of two generations of American painters and presents them from a fresh point of view. The American Impressionists and Realists have been categorized as separate or even opposing groups, but, in fact, they shared significant experiences and goals―notably Parisian training, an enthusiasm for modern French painting, and a desire to translate these sources into a peculiarly American idiom. The continuities between these two groups are more impressive and the constrasts more subtle, a complexity that is highlighted by arranging the works not by artist or chronology, but by broad subject categories: the country, the city, and the home.  The turn of the last century was a time of unprecedented political, economic, and social change due to industrialization, rise of the middle class, redefinition of family and gender roles, and a new scientific understanding of the world. People were acutely aware that they were living in a new age, and modernity became a key concept in their definition of themselves and their times. Charles Baudelaire's issued a mandate in his essay "The Painting of Modern Life" in 1863, that modernity must accompany true beauty in painting. In their dazzling sunlit landscapes, bustling city views, and glimpses of the domestic scene, the American Impressionists and Realists became Baudelairean painters of modern life yet also expressed the nationalism, optimism, euphemism, and nostalgia that typified the American response to the exciting and daunting developments of their new era. [This book was originally published in 1994 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915

A major book on a major American Impressionist. From the late 1880s to around 1915, Childe Hassam, America's foremost impressionist, frequently visited the Isles of Shoals, the site of a summer resort popular with many American artists and writers. Paintings from Hassam's Isles of Shoals series are among the most familiar icons of late nineteenth-century American art. But until now, a comprehensive selection of these beautiful works had not been collected in one place. David Park Curry's informative text provides the background essential to a full appreciation of these works. 105 full-color reproductions and100 black-and-white photographs.

Childe Hassam: An Island Garden Revisited

W.W.Norton&Company

James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art

Shows a selection of Whistler's drawings, pastels, watercolors, and paintings and discusses the artist's life and career

Architecture

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

9 3/4 By 11`` 1st Edition, damage to tips of front corners, Interior fine. Full page color plates. No International or Priority.

Childe Hassam

Denver Art Museum / Norton

Stunning photos and engaging text tell the story of the Lillian Thomas Pratt Collection from its origins in czarist Russia to its final home in Virginia. Softcover, 132 pp., 95 b/w, 91 color images.

Faberge: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Virginia Museum Of Fine Arts

Smith, Caroline Doswell

Sprinkle, Mark

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

A maestro of modernism who made calculated use of tradition, James McNeill Whistler (1834-"1903) was one of the most easily misinterpreted artists of the later nineteenth century. His emphatically aesthetic paintings, drawings, and prints--"made the more inscrutable by his purposefully confusing titles--"remain uneasy pieces to the present day. In

James MacNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces

Drawn entirely from the collection of James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin of Austin, Texas―one of the largest holdings of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American paintings still in private hands― Capturing Beauty showcases thirty Impressionist and Realist oils, watercolors, and pastels and two sculptures by some of the nation’s leading artists. Appealing Impressionist works by Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent join forces with powerful Realist pictures by George Bellows, Winslow Homer, and Robert Henri. Unexpected gems―a seductive sketch by William Merritt Chase, a subtle seascape by James McNeill Whistler, an evocative interior by William McGregor Paxton―add luster to the collection. Two-thirds of the pictures on view were painted in the United States. Expatriate Americans working in France, Spain, and Italy created the rest. In 1916, two years before he created the most recent work featured in the show, Robert Henri wrote to his students: "The question of development of the art spirit in all walks of life interests me. I mean by this, the development of individual judgment and taste.... If anything can be done to bring the public to a greater consciousness of the relation between art and life, of the part each person plays by exercising and developing his own personal taste and judgment... it would be well." A sparkling watercolor by Maurice Prendergast radiates the energy with which Mr. and Mrs. McGlothlin have exercised their passion for collecting since the mid-1990s. Their recently acquired Sargent oil portrait of Mme. Eugenia Errazuriz, one of the beauties of the late ninteenth century, attests to the collectors’ own love of the beautiful in American art.

Capturing Beauty: American Impressionist and Realist Paintings from the McGlothlin Collection

With this publication, produced in conjunction with the largest expansion in the history of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the full scope of the museum's outstanding American art collection is represented for the first time. Following an introduction tracing the history of American art at this encyclopedic museum--a state-supported, privately endowed institution--readers will discover lively and generously illustrated essays about selected paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by many of America's leading artists: John James Audubon, Thomas Hart Benton, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, John Singleton Copley, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Willson Peale, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, William Wetmore Story, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and James McNeill Whistler. Also included are decorative objects by well-known artisans and firms, such as John Henry Belter, the Goddard-Townsend group, Herter Brothers, Paul Revere, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Organized in chronological sections ranging from the colonial era to the mid-twentieth century, this long-awaited book examines a noteworthy collection through a variety of interpretive lenses--aesthetic and cultural--for the benefit of a broad readership. Published by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in association with the University of Virginia Press.

American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

O'Leary, Elizabeth

Yount, Sylvia

Rawles, Susan J.

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts / University of Virginia Press

Shows a selection of Whistler's drawings, pastels, watercolors, and paintings and discusses the artist's life and career

Freer Gallery of Art

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Curry, David Park. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Curry, David Park

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Curry, David Park. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

American Impressionism and Realism The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915

Childe Hassam: An Island Garden Revisited

James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art

Childe Hassam

Faberge: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

James MacNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces

Capturing Beauty: American Impressionist and Realist Paintings from the McGlothlin Collection

American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art