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| Julius L. Stewart On the yacht Namouna, Venice 1890 oil on canvas Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| John Frederick Peto Afternoon Sailing ca. 1890 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| John Henry Twachtman Boats moored in a Pond mid-1890s oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
"The composition [above] reflects the influence of Japanese art, discovered by Twachtman and his friend J. Alden Weir around 1894. The deep recession of space created by the diagonal zigzag pattern of the boats on the right is flattened by the vertical shapes of the boats, paralleled by the black trunk of the tree, on the left. The tree does not become an integral part of the composition, but serves to emphasize the flatness of the pictorial surface. The foreground boats establish the warm and cool tonalities of the overall composition; their shapes create a pattern that is carried through to the bulbous forms of the distant trees and the echoing arrangement of the clouds. As his friend Eliot Clark wrote of Twachtman: "He saw in nature the means for an arrangement of form and color; he sought not so much the beauty of a part as the relation of parts to an organized whole."
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| Childe Hassam September Clouds 1891 pastel on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
"Unlike Hassam's previous images of apple and pear orchards, often in bloom, September Clouds ... is radical in composition. An apple tree frames the landscape on the left, while another tree on the right, bearing fruit almost ready for harvest, is abruptly cut off in the manner of Japanese prints. The center of the composition remains provocatively empty, showing only the shadows of cumulus clouds overhead. "Such joyous pictures," it was noted, "indicate a spirit of healthy enjoyment in the production, a gusto on the part of the artist, who convinces his public by every crayon-stroke that it is a fine thing to live, to be young, to be a painter ... and above all to make ... such artistic pictures."
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| Childe Hassam Fifth Avenue at Washington Square 1891 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
"Following his return from Paris in 1889, Hassam lived at 95 Fifth Avenue, a few steps from Washington Square, one of the oldest genteel enclaves in the city. This painting probably depicts that block of brownstones and perhaps the sidewalk in front of Hassam's studio apartment. He chose to live on a part of Fifth Avenue that resembled the tree-lined boulevards of Paris. Nearby, the soon to be completed Washington Arch, designed by Stanford White, suggested the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées. During the early 1890s Hassam painted a number of views of the Avenue in all kinds of weather and became well known for them."
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| Alfred Thompson Bricher Looking out to Sea ca. 1885 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| John La Farge Water Lily and Moth ca. 1878 watercolor Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Samuel S. Carr Children on the Beach ca. 1879-81 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
"The artist's use of photography, as well as the possible influence of the camera obscura, has always remained a question in Carr's work which is suggested by the studied nature of his figures. Rarely do his bathers relate to each other. They appear in his beach scenes isolated from their companions as though in a hermetically sealed bell-jar. Yet there is no documentation that Carr, himself, was a photographer, and the popular camera obscura at West Brighton reflected primarily images of the adjacent buildings."
– notes above by Kenneth W. Maddox for Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
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| Hugh Bolton Jones Summer in the Blue Ridge 1874 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| George Catlin Falls of St Anthony 1871 oil on cardboard Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
"Catlin views the scene with the objectivity of a reportage that is also consonant with the detailed tone of his writings: “Although a picturesque and spirited scene,” noted the artist in 1841, it “is but a pygmy in size to Niagara, and other cataracts in our country — the actual perpendicular fall being but eighteen feet, though half a mile or so in extent, which is the width of the river; with brisk and leaping rapids above and below, giving life and spirit to the scene.” To emphasize this vastness, the painter uses a distant viewpoint that allows him to provide a more panoramic view of what he considered a genuine example of the charms of the West. "
-- note by Paloma Alarcó for Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
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| Theodore Robinson The old Bridge 1890 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Worthington Whittredge The Rainbow, Autumn, Catskills 1880s oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| William Merritt Chase In the Park ca. 1889 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
"The "rough rock-work" [depicted above] was the remaining foundation wall of Mount Saint Vincent, a convent for the Sisters of Charity situated in the northeast corner of the Park near 105th Street and Fifth Avenue. In 1847 the Roman Catholic Order purchased the area that was originally the site of McGown's Tavern built in the 1750s. The convent, which included a boarding school for several hundred female students, was incorporated as park land in 1859 under Olmsted and Vaux's development of Central Park. The building served briefly as a military hospital during the Civil War, and then the old convent building reverted to a tavern that catered to the wealthy carriage trade. Mount Saint Vincent burned to the ground in 1881, but was soon rebuilt as another saloon, now named the McGown's Pass Tavern. It was torn down in 1917 by the New York reform mayor, John Purroy Mitchel, who desired to maintain the natural qualities of the park. The foundation wall, but not the pathway, still remains today."
– note by Kenneth W. Maddox for Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
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| William Merritt Chase Shinnecock Hills ca. 1893-97 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
I am grateful for the excellent reproductions from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.