Until January 24th, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915” – an exhibition that includes “more than 100 masterpieces of American painting explores a major mode of artistic expression from the pre-Revolutionary era to the beginning of World War I: figural scenes of ordinary people engaged in life’s tasks and pleasures. In the exhibition’s first section (ca. 1765–1830), John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Samuel F. B. Morse and others produce evocative portraits that tell personal stories and reflect the shift from colonies to nation. The second section (ca. 1830–1860) includes multi-figured compositions by William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, Lilly Martin Spencer, and others that help to define national identity and national character. In the exhibition’s third section (ca. 1860–1876), Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Thomas Eakins, and others respond to the Civil War and, going forward, encode Reconstruction and the Centennial in pictures that contribute to healing the nation’s spirit. In the fourth and final section (ca. 1876–1915), Homer and Eakins are joined by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Sloan, George Bellows, and others who respond to new subjects and new expressive modes in an increasingly cosmopolitan age.”
“American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915”, til January 24, 2010
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
5th Ave and 86 Street, NYC
Image: “A Street in Venice”, John Singer Sargent, 1882, oil on canvas
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