Eakins, Thomas

'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 Metropolitan Museum began acquiring American drawings and watercolors in 1880, just ten years after its founding. Since then it has amassed more than 1,500 works executed by American artists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in watercolor, pastel, chalk, ink, graphite, gouache, and charcoal. Roughly a third of the collection is by John Singer Sargent and was published as a single volume in 2000. …