An Artist's Paradise.

Europe beckoned to American artists of the late nineteenth century. The painter William Merritt Chase, originally from Indiana, proclaimed that he would "rather go to Europe than go to heaven"—a sentiment shared by many in his generation. The art studios of Munich, London, Antwerp, Rome, and above all Paris swarmed with young Americans during the latter decades of the century. Some Americans —the painters James McNeill Whistler in England, Mary Cassatt in France—settled overseas more or less permanently. Others studied abroad and then returned to the United States to teach, to paint, and to plant European ideas in American soil. Of all the artistic movements to bloom in Europe during the 1870s and 1880s, none proved more hardy—or more readily exportable —than Impressionism.

The Many Facets of Impressionism.

The Impressionist movement transformed painting in the late...