13-A Walker Evans, Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1929

Modern art: refers to artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art.

13-A Walker Evans, Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1929
- Would you recognize the image in this photograph as a bridge if it were not titled? Is this the shape you visualize when they think of a bridge?
- Why not? It’s from a different viewpoint than the one from which we usually see a bridge.
- When most artists create a picture of a bridge, what view do they show of it? Most photographs show a side view. (Below is a print of the bridge from 1883, when the bridge was completed. Notice how the perspective is very different.)

- Where was the camera when this photograph was taken? It was down low, looking up at one of the bridge’s two towers.
- Locate the point to which all the cable lines seem to lead. It is near the top center of the bridge tower.
- Is this point centered in the photograph? No, it isn’t.
- Is the balance in this picture symmetrical or asymmetrical? It is asymmetrical.
- Have you ever seen windows that were shaped like the arches on this bridge. Where did you see these? These pointed arches resemble Gothic arches usually found in medieval churches and architecture. Students might have seen pointed arches in a church.
- Gothic cathedrals were the great engineering achievements of medieval Europe. What might the presence of Gothic arches in the Brooklyn Bridge have symbolized? The reference to Gothic architecture might have symbolized that the Brooklyn Bridge was an American marvel of engineering, equivalent to the Gothic cathedrals of Europe.
- Evans wanted his photographs to show the national character of America. How does this photograph satisfy his aim? The Brooklyn Bridge, in America’s largest city, was a structure that Americans were proud of. It was a modern feat of engineering and architecture. Evans’s photograph shows the beauty of a structure that thousands of Americans used every day.
- Until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, photography was primarily a means of documentation and was not considered art. The photographer who took this picture considered photography to be an art form. Do you agree with him? Use this photograph to support your reasoning.
- Evans used a modern medium (photography) to create a modern image of a famous structure. When he had studied art in Paris, he saw modern European art that featured abstract, simplified forms. How is this photograph like abstract modern art? Its unconventional viewpoint makes the shape of the bridge seem abstract and not easily recognizable. The stark dark shape against the plain light background with the explosion of lines leading to it makes it seem like a contemporary geometric composition.

14-A Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party, 1893/1894

14-A Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party, 1893/1894
- Locate the horizon line. Where would a viewer have to be to see the people and boat from this angle? A viewer would have to be located a little above them, perhaps on a dock or standing in the boat.
- Where are the horizontal lines in this painting? They occur on the shoreline and the yellow boat seats and supports.
- What is the center of interest in this composition? It is the child.
- How has Cassatt emphasized this part of the painting? The curved lines of the boat, oar, and adults’ arms lead to the child.
- Where did Cassatt repeat yellow in this painting? Yellow is repeated in the boat, oars, and the woman’s hat.
- How does blue unify this painting? Cassatt repeats blue in large areas of water and inside the boat.
- Why does the man have his foot on the yellow boat support? He is getting ready to pull the oars or is steadying himself.
- Describe the movement that the boat might make in the water. It may be rocking and surging as the oars are pulled.
- Imagine that the man and woman are talking to each other. What might they say? What do their faces and bodies suggest about their relationship?
- How is the composition of this painting like a snapshot? It’s asymmetrical, with part of the figures continuing off the picture.
- Where are there broad areas of color? Broad areas of color are found in the sail, the man’s back, the yellow parts of boat, the blue shadow in the boat, and the water.(Asymmetrical balance and broad, flat areas of color were typical of the Japanese prints that became available in Europe and the United States following the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry in 1854; these prints influenced artists in the decades that followed.)
- Are there any other ways in which the painting appears flat? The boat looks tipped up and the water is painted the same way in the foreground and the background, so that the idea of distance is reduced.
- In what ways do forms seem to move toward the edges of the painting? Examples: the woman leans left, the man leans right; the sail pulls to one corner, the oar points to another; the edges of the boat bulge out toward the sides; the horizon nearly reaches the top; and the lower yellow boat seat continues beyond the bottom.
What pulls the three figures together? The white area of the boat surrounds them; they look at each other; and their hands are close.
What might this feeling of expansion and contraction have to do with the subject of the painting? It echoes the rowing motion of the man. Students might also point out that it could also emphasize this brief and precious moment—when the man, woman, and child are intimately connected.

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/americanstories/objectView.aspx?oid=2&sid=5
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878; Oil on canvas; 35 1/2 x 51 1/8 in. (89.5 x 129.8 cm)Inspired by Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and other members of their circle, Cassatt embraced the Impressionists' commitment to forthright storytelling about inconsequential subjects. In a room crammed with haphazardly arranged furniture, the daughter of friends of Degas sprawls on an overstuffed chair while Cassatt's Brussels griffon rests on another. Although Cassatt's candid picture of a bored or exhausted child repudiates traditional portraits of charming little girls in proper poses holding faithful dogs, she was enraged when the American jury rejected it for display at the 1878 Exposition Universelle. Instead, she showed it with the Impressionists in 1879, the first of her four exhibitions with the group.

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/americanstories/objectView.aspx?oid=8&sid=5
A Woman and a Girl Driving, 1881; Oil on canvas; 35 1/4 x 51 3/8 in. (89.7 x 130.5 cm)Cassatt settled in Paris in 1874 and became the only American to show her works with the Impressionists. She specialized in portraying women's activities. This canvas conveys the comfortable existence of women in her circle and her own support of female empowerment. Cassatt's sister, Lydia, who came to live in Paris in 1877, is seen driving a small carriage in the Bois de Boulogne, enjoying a familiar outing and taking charge of her own path—actually and symbolically. She is accompanied by Odile Fèvre, a niece of Edgar Degas. Lydia's independence and determined concentration are in contrast to the family's passive young groom, who observes from the backward-facing seat only where the carriage has been, not where it is going.


http://www.metmuseum.org/special/americanstories/objectView.aspx?oid=11&sid=5
Lady at the Tea Table, 1883–85; Oil on canvas; 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 61 cm)Cassatt's formidable image of her mother's first cousin, Mary Dickinson Riddle, presiding at tea, a daily ritual among upper-middle-class women, is imbued with the spirit of authoritative conspicuous consumption. Mrs. Riddle holds a teapot, part of a gilded blue-and-white Canton porcelain service that her daughter had presented to Cassatt's family. In response to the gift, Cassatt painted the portrait, which demonstrates her mastery of Impressionism in the rapid brushwork and sketchlike finish, the casual handling of anatomy (notably Mrs. Riddle's ring-laden hand), and the sitter's indifference to the viewer. Cassatt set all her stories of everyday Parisian life in fashionable surroundings, which suggests the propriety that a female artist needed to observe, in contrast to colleagues such as Édouard Manet, who could frequent and portray plebeian (working-class) cafés.



http://www.metmuseum.org/special/americanstories/objectView.aspx?oid=25&sid=5
Young Mother Sewing, 1900; Oil on canvas; 36 3/8 x 29 in. (92.4 x 73.7 cm)During the 1890s Cassatt narrowed the range of her subjects to mothers or nurses caring for children, and children alone. These themes reflected her affection for her nieces and nephews and her friends' children as well as her contemporaries' concern with motherhood and child rearing. Set in the conservatory of Cassatt's seventeenth-century manor house near Le Mesnil-Théribus, Oise, this painting depicts two of her favorite unrelated models in the roles of mother and child. Louisine Havemeyer, who purchased the painting in 1901, remarked on the truthfulness of its narrative: "Look at that little child that has just thrown herself against her mother's knee, regardless of the result and oblivious to the fact that she could disturb ‘her mamma.' And she is quite right . . . Mamma simply draws back a bit and continues to sew."

12-B Childe Hassam, Allies Day, May 1917, 1917

12-B Childe Hassam, Allies Day, May 1917, 1917
- Describe the brushstrokes in this painting. They can be distinguished separately, as if the artist has just made them. They are not blended together to make a smooth surface and are of different sizes.
Distinguish distinct elements in this painting:
- Find the church tower. It is on the left.
- Where are the trees in Central Park? They are the green in the lower center of the painting.
- What is happening in the street? The street is filled with people. Perhaps there is a parade.
- Where are the shadows and what color are they? They are under projecting parts of the buildings and in the street,and they are blue.
- How is this painting like an impression rather than a finished artwork? The bright colors, unblended brushstrokes, and lack of intricate detail make it seem like a quick glance at a scene.
- Which flag in the middle ground stands alone and is not overlapped by other flags? The American flag is surrounded by light blue sky.
- What does this suggest about how Hassam felt about his country? He thought America was unique and was proud of his country.
- What international event was happening when this was painted? It was painted during World War I.
- Why were so many flags flying in New York City on this day? A month before this was painted, the United States officially entered the war. On this day the British and French war commissioners were visiting New York.
- What do these flags flying together symbolize? They symbolize the fact that these three nations were standing together to fight the war.
- What elements do the flags have in common? They are all red, blue, and white.
- What does this painting show about America’s spirit in 1917? Americans were proud of their country and optimistic about the future and this alliance with France, Britain, and Canada.
- Why did this painting become famous soon after it was completed? Color reproductions of it were sold to benefit the war effort.
- Why did Americans want copies of this painting? For the beauty of the art and to show support for America and its allies as it joined them in the war.

The French Impressionists

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by giving colours, freely brushed, primacy over line. They also took the act of painting out of the studio and into the modern world. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes had usually been painted indoors. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall effects rather than details. They used short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed colour, not smoothly blended, as was customary, in order to achieve the effect of intense colour vibration.

Monet ( water lilies/gardens, haystacks, landscapes/waterscapes)
Impression, Sunrise, 1872
Poppies Blooming 1873
Frost on Haystacks, 1888-1889
Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies 1899



















Renoir (women, children, social scenes)
Dance at le Moulin de la Galette, 1876
Girls at the Piano, 1892



















Degas (ballerinas/dancers)
The star, 1878



















Cezanne (still lifes, mountains/landscapes, vivid color)
Mont Sainte-Victoire 1885-1887
Still Life, Drapery, Pitcher, and Fruit Bowl, 1893-1894

12-A John Singer Sargent, Portrait of a Boy, 1890

12-A John Singer Sargent, Portrait of a Boy, 1890
- If you were to be sitting the way this boy is sitting, what would your mood probably be?
- What do the two poses say about how each sitter probably felt about posing for this picture?
- Homer is dressed in an outfit based on a story that was extremely popular with mothers, but this costume was also beginning to be associated with being a “mama’s boy”. Is Homer portrayed as a “mama’s boy”? (He isn’t acting obediently, he is sitting restlessly and awkwardly in his chair with a bored expression on his face, fingers spread and his back at an angle to his mother.)
- How has Sargent used the room and accessories in this painting to intensify Homer’s feelings of impatience? (the chair is too big, the swirling pattern of the carpet)
- Which figure is the most important in this portrait? How do we know?
- Sargent made his living off painting portraits of wealthy Americans and Europeans. How do you think this work, done for a friend, may have differed if it had been commissioned by a wealthy family who wanted to hang it in a prominent place in their home? (Think: George Washington. Homer’s mother would have been in a fancier dress and may have been painted facing the painter/viewer, boy less restless, more ornate surroundings.)


The Blue Boy (c. 1770) is an oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough. Perhaps Gainsborough's most famous work, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, although this was never proved. It is a historical costume study as well as a portrait: the youth in his 17th-century apparel is regarded as Gainsborough's homage to Anthony Van Dyck (1599 – 1641. A Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of King Charles I of England and Scotland and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draftsman, and was an important innovator in watercolor and etching.).
Gainsborough had already painted something on the canvas before beginning The Blue Boy, which he painted over. The painting itself is on a fairly large canvas for a portrait, measuring 48 inches wide by 70 inches tall. The portrait now resides in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

The children of King Charles I of England in 1637 by Van Dyck.

William Merritt Chase 1849-1916

Chase cultivated multiple personnae: sophisticated cosmopolitan, devoted family man, and esteemed teacher. Chase married Alice Gerson in 1886 and together they raised eight children during Chase's most energetic artistic period. His eldest daughters, Alice Dieudonnee Chase and Dorothy Bremond Chase, often modeled for their father.

At Tenth Street in New York City, Chase had moved into Albert Bierstadt's old studio and had decorated it as an extension of his own art. Chase filled the studio with lavish furniture, decorative objects, stuffed birds, oriental carpets, and exotic musical instruments. The studio served as a focal point for the sophisticated and fashionable members of the New York City art world of the late 19th century. By 1895 the cost of maintaining the studio, in addition to his other residences, forced Chase to close it and auction the contents.

In addition to his painting, Chase actively developed an interest in teaching. Chase adopted the plein air method of painting, and often taught his students in outdoor classes. He also opened the Chase School of Art in 1896, which became the New York School of Art two years later with Chase staying on as instructor until 1907. Chase was one of the most important teachers of American artists around the turn of the 20th century. In addition to his instruction of East Coast artists like Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, M. Jean McLane, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Edward Charles Volkert, he had an important role in influencing California art at the turn of the century, especially in interactions with Arthur Frank Mathews, Xavier Martinez and Percy Gray.

Portrait painting - Chase worked in all media. He was most fluent in oil painting and pastel, but also created watercolor paintings and etchings. He is perhaps best known for his portraits, his sitters including some of the most important men and women of his time in addition to his own family. Chase often painted his wife Alice and their children, sometimes in individual portraits, and other times in scenes of domestic tranquility: at breakfast in their backyard, or relaxing at their summer home on Long Island, the children playing on the floor or among the sand dunes of Shinnecock.

Landscapes - In addition to painting portraits and full-length figurative works, Chase began painting landscapes in earnest in the late 1880s. His interest in landscape art may have been sparked by the landmark New York exhibit of French impressionist works in 1886. Chase is best remembered for two series of landscape subjects, both painted in an impressionist manner. The first was his scenes of Prospect Park, Brooklyn and Central Park in New York [see below]; the second were his summer landscapes at Shinnecock [see below]. Chase usually featured people prominently in his landscapes. Often he depicted women and children in leisurely poses, relaxing on a park bench, on the beach, or lying in the summer grass at Shinnecock. The Shinnecock works in particular have come to be thought of by art historians as particularly fine examples of American Impressionism.

Still lifes - Chase continued to paint still lifes as he had done since his student days. Decorative objects filled his studios and homes, and his interior figurative scenes frequently included still life images. Perhaps Chase's most famous still life subject was dead fish, which he liked to paint against dark backgrounds, limp on a plate as though fresh from a fishmonger's stall.

Honors and late career - Chase won many honors at home and abroad, was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York, and from 1885 to 1895 was president of the Society of American Artists.

Chase's creativity declined in his later years, especially as modern art took hold in America, but he continued to paint and teach into the 1910s. One of his last teaching positions was at Carmel, California in the summer of 1914. Chase died on October 25, 1916 in his New York townhouse, an esteemed elder of the American art world. Today his works are in most major museums in the United States.

Idle Hours, ca. 1894; Oil on canvas; 39 x 48 5/8 in. (99.1 x 123.5 cm)Between 1891 and 1902 Chase found genteel outdoor subjects in Southampton, Long Island, where he directed the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. In this scene, set on the scrubby dunes along Shinnecock Bay, he shows four of his frequent models: a woman in a red bonnet (probably his wife), two of his daughters, and, possibly, one of Mrs. Chase's sisters. Chase invites the viewer to fill in the picture's sketchy forms and elusive story. Idle Hours, which is typical of the pictures of urbanites enjoying suburban retreats that displaced images of country folk at play, hints at the growth of leisure time in response to urbanization and industrialization, women's predominance at summer resorts while their husbands worked in the city, and unaccompanied women's preference for safe seaside pastimes. The narrative may also be as simple as Henry James's observation: "Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

The Lake for Miniature Yachts, ca. 1888; Oil on canvas; 16 x 24 in. (40.6 x 61 cm)The American Impressionists captured the energy and fragmentation of contemporary experience in Paris, Boston, New York, and other cities, often focusing on public parks, which allowed them to portray urban life without confronting urban hardship. Although he usually stressed pastoral charm in his park paintings, Chase allowed the pavement to dominate this view of the Conservatory Water, a small pond just inside the Fifth Avenue boundary of New York's Central Park, at Seventy-third Street. He shows Fifth Avenue's rooftops invading the insulating screen of trees that surrounds the park, thus signaling growing challenges to the park's rural fiction. A boy in a fashionable sailor suit striding along at left and an older boy and a well-dressed younger girl at the pond's edge appear as if glimpsed in an instant, quietly pursuing their own interests without any concern for the viewer or for enacting an apparent narrative.

An English Cod, 1904, oil on canvas

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Merritt_Chase and http://www.metmuseum.org/special/americanstories/theme.aspx?sid=5

11-B James McNeill Whistler, Harmony in Blue and Gold, The Peacock Room, 1876–1877

11-B James McNeill Whistler, Harmony in Blue and Gold, The Peacock Room, 1876–1877
-Look closely at all areas of this room. Where are the peacocks?
-Why is this room called the peacock room? (The four peacocks, the color of the room)
-What words would you use to describe this room? Why those words?
-What objects seem exotic or foreign to Western Europeans and Americans? (The peacocks are Asian birds, blue and white Chinese ceramics fill the shelves, the woman in the painting stands on an oriental rug in front of an Asian screen, wearing a kimono)
-How did Whistler create a sense of unity and harmony in the room? (Color, repeated patterns, use of gold)
-How did Whistler make his painting of the woman an important part of the rooms’ overall design? (It’s over the fireplace, surrounded by gold shelves that match its frame)
-Imagine people in this room when it was first designed. How would they dress? (In the 1870’s, women wore long, elaborate dresses and men wore cravats/ties, fitted jackets and long trousers)
-What might they do in a room like this? (Originally this was the dining room; parties or groups of people would dine and admire the room and its collection of ceramics)
-How does the room embody Whistler’s philosophy of “art for art’s sake”? (The owner intended it to be a dining room and a place to display his collection of fine East Asian porcelain, but after Whistler had finished, the room draws more attention to itself as a work of art. It contains no moral message, but there is symbolism in the design of the peacock fight, which refers to the dispute between Whistler and the room’s owner.)
(Click on an image to view it full-size)