Americans in Paris

James Abbott McNeill Whistler
The Coast of Brittany (1861)
Oil on canvas. Private collection.

I love MFA's exhibitions. Americans in Paris is just one of them. I went with Sophie yesterday. I was so overwhelmed to learn so many new names (though they were 19th century painters, a lot of their names are still new to me), especially so many women painters, and to see so many beautiful paintings.

This exhibition is about paintings American painters made and exhibited in late 19th century in Paris, the artistic capital of the world. Among them were John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt. I knew their works before, but it was still interesting to see so many Mary Cassatt's portraits of her family members together in one exhibition hall.

The one (new) painter that impressed me most was James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), a Massachusetts native. The painting above, The Coast of Brittany, shocked me when I first saw it: the sharp edges of the rocks, the abrupt juxtaposition of brown next to blue, the crushing waves and the sleeping girl. Yet stepping back and looking at it from faraway, I really liked the colors and the composition.

I had to go back to the other room to see again his Arrangement in Gray and Black: Portrait of the Artist's Mother (1871), which is almost monochromatic except for the rosy colors on his mother's face and hands. It is said that Whistler's mother prayed for her son's success as a painter while sitting for this painting. The painter would have been 37 that year. You see, a son is always a boy in a mother's mind. Whistler did succeed and this painting won him prizes and was later bought by the French government.

Arrangement in Grey and Black, No 1 (Whistler's Mother) (1871)

It is Whistler's theory that art should essentially be concerned with the beautiful arrangement of colors in harmony. This is shown by the names of his painting: Symphony in White, No. 1 (this is also in the exhibition, on the opposite wall to Arrangement in Gray and Black), his Arrangement seriel and Nocturne series, etc.

Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862)

The following is the description to the exhibition at the MFA website:

Explore the romance and magnetic attraction of the French capital to nineteenth-century American artists through the irresistible “Americans in Paris.” From about 1860 to 1900, hundreds of American painters traveled to the capital of the western art world to enroll in art schools, to establish their artistic reputations, or to join the city’s significant American expatriate community. The cosmopolitan city's influence is evident in the vibrant paintings and sculpture by some of America’s most celebrated artists, including James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt.

The exhibition explores paintings Americans made and displayed in Paris, including Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother; images of the city by such painters as Childe Hassam, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Sargent; depictions of Americans “at home” in Paris by Cassatt and others; and views of several popular summer art colonies, including Giverny and Brittany. Finallly, the show explores how Americans adapted distinctly French styles to paint American subjects.