The Museum's collection illuminates all aspects of Sargent's career. The drawings and watercolors in particular reflect his activity outside the portrait studio: his sojourns in Spain, Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa, and in the Middle East; his enduring fascination with Venice; his holidays in the Italian lake district and the Alps; his tours of North America, including Florida and the Rocky Mountains; his visit as an official war artist to the western front in 1918; and his work as a muralist at the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Harvard University's Widener Library.

American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent

Arts & Photography

Herdrich, Stephanie L.

Weinberg, H. Barbara

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

"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

Bolger, Doreen

Curry, David Park

"I believe the man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of every-day life around him," declared Childe Hassam in 1892. It was as a pioneer of American Impressionism and perhaps its most prolific and successful practitioner that Hassam (1859-1935) realized this credo. In so doing, he provided an account of our national life during a dynamic period. At the same time he helped to create a wave of enthusiasm for American Impressionism that he rode to fame and fortune.

Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

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

The painter William Glackens (1870–1938) and his friends were among the liveliest and most influential American artists of the opening decades of the twentieth century. Their continued importance in the history of American art is explored in this informative collection of essays. Colin Bailey chronicles the beginnings of Albert C. Barnes’ unparalleled collection of modern art, as well as Glackens’ role in forming it, and Avis Berman investigates the friendship of John Sloan, Robert Henri and John Butler Yeats. Carol Troyen examines George Bellows’ war paintings and Richard J. Wattenmaker probes the relationship between Glackens’ paintings and sketchbooks. H. Barbara Weinberg documents how the leading American Impressionists and members of The Eight dealt with the pressures of economic survival. This profusely illustrated publication is an essential reference for curators, collectors and historians.

The World of William Glackens: The C. Richard Hilker Art Lectures

Troyen, Carol

Berman, Avis

Bailey, Colin

Wattenmaker, Richard

Individual Artists

Sansom Foundation, Inc.

The American Pupils of Jean-Léon Gérome (Anne Burnett Tandy Lectures in American Civilization)

Amon Carter Museum

Uncanny Spectacle: The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent

By the time John Singer Sargent turned thirty, years old in 1886, he already commanded an international reputation in the art world, creating a stream of works for exhibition that people eagerly awaited and discussed at length. Henry, James noted that Sargent's talent offered "the slightly 'uncanny' spectacle" of an artist on the threshold of his career who in fact had nothing more to learn. This book explores how the young American painter in just over a decade jumped from apprenticeship to wide acclaim, how he presented himself and his works, and how he sought to shape public perception of his talent. The book includes illustrations of every painting Sargent exhibited in Paris, London, and New York through 1887.
Drawing on the correspondence of the artist, his friends, and his family, as well as an extensive review of contemporary critical responses, the text examines these works of Sargent's early maturity -- some unseen in this century and others among his best-known works, including Smoke of Ambergris and Madame X. The authors contend that the canvases present a fresh view of Sargent's aspirations and ambitions, representing a metaphoric self-portrait of the artist as a young man. The early paintings, their relationship to one another, and their reception also shed light on the complex, cosmopolitan art world in which Sargent lived.
Uncanny Spectacle accompanies an exhibition of John Singer Sargent's early paintings that will open in June 1997 at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Sargent, John Singer

Simpson, Marc

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Ormond, Richard

Clark Art Inst

As the center of the art world in the late nineteenth century, Paris was a magnet for American art students and artists. They flocked to the studios of French artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme, William Bouguereau, and others, dreamed of showing their work at the annual Paris Salon, and watched intently as new styles such as Impressionism began to take hold. Hardly an American painter was unaffected by developments in Paris, and even those who chose not to study there wanted their work to be affirmed by French audiences and taste makers. This beautifully illustrated book traces the role of American artists in Paris from the Salon des Refusés, in 1863, to the emergence of a uniquely American style of painting at the turn of the century. It includes iconic images by John Singer Sargent, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and Winslow Homer, and by many other artists whose names and work were more widely known then than now. Engaging essays written by notable scholars explore why artists were drawn to Paris, how they responded to what they found there, and what they retained of their experience. In addition, the significance of the Expositions Universelles, the French view of American artists in Paris, and the role these artists played in shaping the great American collections of modern French painting are discussed. Featuring more than 100 paintings, the essays are followed by artists’ biographies, an illustrated, annotated list of works, and a complete bibliography.

Americans in Paris 1860-1900

Hirshler, Erica E.

Adler, Kathleen

National Gallery London

American Impressionists Abroad and at Home: Paintings from the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

San Diego Museum of Art

American Federation of Arts

Larkin, Susan G.

Metropolitan Museum Of Art (new York, N.y.)

Amer Federation of Arts

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