Rediscover late 19th- and early 20th-century painters who left the United States as expatriates and returned to shape the course of American art. In Paris, they trained under the influence of the École des Beaux-Arts and studied the “old master” works at the Louvre but then went beyond traditional practices to experiment with new ideas and techniques. Whistler to Cassatt: American Painters in France examines the rich variety and complexity of American painting in the advent of modernism, as French avant-garde philosophies and styles melded with American individualism.
Assembled from international collections, the exhibition features more than 100 paintings by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Theodore Robinson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Elizabeth Nourse, Cecilia Beaux, and many others.
This exhibition is organized by the Denver Art Museum and curated for VMFA by Dr. Susan J. Rawles, Elizabeth Locke Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts.
National Tour Sponsor
Jane Joel Knox
Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Exhibition Endowment
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. Garner, Jr.
Dr. and Mrs. William V. Garner
Julia Louise Reynolds Fund
McGue Millhiser Family Trust
Lilli and William Beyer
Dr. Donald S. and Beejay Brown Endowment
Nancy and Wayne Chasen
Dorothy Ryland Garber Claybrook Trust
The Jeanann Gray Dunlap Foundation
Elisabeth Shelton Gottwald Fund
Alexandria Rogers McGrath
Richard S. Reynolds Foundation
Virginia H. Spratley Charitable Fund II
Kelly and Tiff Armstrong
Anita Bruch, Amy Bruch, and Will and Cary Bruch
Anna Kay Chandler
Birch Douglass
E. B. Duff Charitable Lead Annuity Trust
Mr. and Mrs. R. Augustus Edwards III
Dr. William J. Frable
Richard and Jean Hofheimer
William and Pamela O’Connor
Patricia P. Pusey
Anne Marie Whittemore
VMFA is also grateful to the following sponsors:
Tenley and Wyatt Beazley | Mr. and Mrs. William E. Collin | Page and John Corey | John Crowder and Mary Bacon | Timothy and Tonya Finton | Mr. and Mrs. David R. Frediani | Jeff Gumenick | Roberta and Matt Matthews | Mr. and Mrs. Michael Parker | Mr. and Mrs. J. Sargeant Reynolds, Jr. | The Rock Foundation | Barbara Basl Stokey | Britt and Mark Van Deusen | An Anonymous Donor
IMAGE Sunlight (detail), 1909, Frank Weston Benson (American, 1862–1951), oil on canvas. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, John Herron Fund, 11.1. © The Frank W. Benson Trust