American Impressionism.

American artists and their patrons rightly felt proud of the achievements of the past century. Excellent public art institutes existed in New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago, and private collectors had acquired some of the most magnificent of Europe's art treasures. Painters such as George Inness (1825-1894) had moved beyond the Hudson River school by applying a looser brush style to create rich, emotional landscapes. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), Winslow Homer (1836-1910), John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), and James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) were living masters of international repute. Eakins's thoughtful, realistic portraits and his vigorous sporting scenes bore the stamp of his intellectual independence, while the vibrant influence of thirty years of French Impressionism could be seen in the works of Homer, Sargent, and Whistler. These painters' reductions of solid objects to broad smudges and misty shadows and their concern with...