American Impressionism

Frank W. Benson, Eleanor Holding a Shell, North Haven, Maine, 1902, private collection.

American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. American Impressionism is a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors.

An emerging artistic style from Paris

Theodore Robinson, Low Tide Riverside Yacht Club, (1894), Collection of Margaret and Raymond Horowitz

Impressionism emerged as an artistic style in France in the 1860s. Major exhibitions of French impressionist works in Boston and New York in the 1880s introduced the style to the American public. Some of the first American artists to paint in an impressionistic mode, such as Theodore Robinson, did so in the late 1880s after visiting France and meeting with artists such as Claude Monet. Others, such as Childe Hassam, took notice of the increasing numbers of French impressionist works at American exhibitions.

Trailblazers from the turn of the 20th century

From the 1890s through the 1910s, American impressionism flourished in art colonies—loosely affiliated groups of artists who lived and worked together and shared a common aesthetic vision. Art colonies tended to form in small towns that provided affordable living, abundant scenery for painting, and relatively easy access to large cities where artists could sell their work. Some of the most important American impressionist artists gathered at Cos Cob and Old Lyme, Connecticut, both on Long Island Sound; New Hope, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River; and Brown County, Indiana. American impressionist artists also thrived in California at Carmel and Laguna Beach; in New York on eastern Long Island at Shinnecock, largely due to the influence of William Merritt Chase; and in Boston where Edmund Charles Tarbell and Frank Weston Benson became important practitioners of the impressionist style.

Jazz age artists' colonies fizzled

Some American art colonies remained vibrant centers of impressionist art into the 1920s. However, impressionism in America lost its cutting-edge status in 1913 when a historical exhibition of modern art took place at the 69th Regiment Armory building in New York City. The “Armory Show”, as it came to be called, heralded a new painting style regarded as more in touch with the increasingly fast-paced and chaotic world, especially with the outbreak of World War I. The Great Depression and World War II.

The rebirth of impressionism in America: The 1950s and beyond

In the 1950s, a quarter of a century after the death of Monet, major museums in America started having exhibitions of the original French Impressionists paintings, and in so doing Impressionism was reborn. The resurgence of interest in Impressionism continues to this day, and is especially evident in the continued popularity of plein-air painting.

Notable American impressionists

Prominent impressionist painters, from the United States include:

Gallery

• 

  Mary Cassatt, Lilacs in a Window, 1880

• 

  Childe Hassam, Celia Thaxter's Garden, 1890, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

• 

  Edmund C. Tarbell, In the Orchard, 1891, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

• 

  William Merritt Chase, Idle Hours, 1894, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

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  John Henry Twachtman, The White Bridge, ca. 1895, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

• 

  J. Alden Weir, Ravine near Branchville, c. 1905-1915, Dallas Museum of Art

See also

• Impressionism
• Pennsylvania Impressionism
• Hoosier Group
• Richmond Group

References

Sources

• Gerdts, William H. (2001). American Impressionism (Second ed.). New York: Abbeville Press Publishers. ISBN 0-7892-0737-0. 
• Moure,Nancy (1998). California Art: 450 Years of Painting and Other Media. Los Angeles: Dustin Publications. ISBN 0-9614622-4-8. 
• Gerdts, William H. and South, Will (1998). California Impressionism. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-7892-0176-3. 
• Landauer, Susan (Editor) (1996). California Impressionists. Athens, Ga.: The Irvine Museum and Georgia Museum of Art. ISBN 0-915977-25-7. 
• Weinberg, Barbara H. (2004). Childe Hassam: American Impressionist. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 1-58839-119-1. 
• Larkin, Susan G. (2001). The Cos Cob Art Colony. New York: the National Academy of Design. ISBN 0-300-08852-3. 
• Westphal, Ruth Lilly (Editor) (1986). Plein Air Painters of California: The North. Irvine, Calif.: Westphal Publishing. ISBN 0-9610520-1-5. 
• Westphal, Ruth Lilly (Editor) (1982). Plein Air Painters of California: The Southland. Irvine, Calif.: Westphal Publishing. ISBN 0-9610520-0-7. 
• Peterson, Brian H. (Editor) (2002). Pennsylvania Impressionism. Philadelphia: James A. Michener Art Museum and University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-3700-5. 

External links

• smARThistory: Cassatt's The Cup of Tea
• Weir Farm:Home of an American Impressionist, a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
• ^{[dead link]}Impressionism at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

v t e Impressionism Originators Frédéric Bazille Eugène Boudin Gustave Caillebotte Mary Cassatt Paul Cézanne Edgar Degas Armand Guillaumin Édouard Manet Claude Monet Berthe Morisot Camille Pissarro Pierre-Auguste Renoir Jules Ernest Renoux Alfred Sisley Patrons Gustave Caillebotte Henry O. Havemeyer Ernest Hoschedé Dealers Paul Durand-Ruel Georges Petit Ambroise Vollard American Artists William Merritt Chase Frederick Carl Frieseke Childe Hassam Willard Metcalf Lilla Cabot Perry Theodore Robinson John Henry Twachtman J. Alden Weir Other artists Lovis Corinth Max Liebermann Max Slevogt Konstantin Korovin Valentin Serov Francisco Oller Laura Muntz Lyall Władysław Podkowiński Nazmi Ziya Güran Chafik Charobim Ernest Jean-Marie Millard de Bois Durand Other media Music Literature French Impressionist Cinema See also Decorative Impressionism Post-Impressionism