Mich. art gallery exhibition features US Impressionists

MUSKEGON, Mich. – Artists from France — Monet, Renoir and Cezanne, to name a few — are most closely associated with the Impressionist style of painting because the beloved movement developed there in the late 19th century. But a new exhibition serves as a reminder that there were also some talented and important U.S. artists who embraced Impressionism.

"Sunlight in a Paintbrush: American Impressionism from Regional Collections" opened Thursday at the Muskegon Museum of Art. Of the 59 paintings on display, 16 are from the museum's own collection. The rest are on loan from other public and private collections in the Midwest.

John Singer Sargent, who was born in Florence, Italy, to American parents, is probably the most famous artist in the show, which runs through Aug. 31. Best known for his portraits and landscapes, his "Facade of a Palazzo, Girgenti, Sicily," a watercolor on paper done about 1901, was loaned to the museum by the Keny Galleries in Columbus, Ohio.

Sargent painted "with a lot of verve and energy in a unique and fluent style" and his reputation as an artist has soared during the past two decades, gallery co-owner James M. Keny said.

"Sargent was an extremely important American Impressionist," he said. "He was among the first of the American artists to understand the Impressionist works of Claude Monet and Renoir."

Other noted artists who are represented include Indiana native William Merritt Chase; Michigan-born Frederick Frieseke; Massachusetts native Willard Metcalf; Ohioan Edward Potthast; Theodore Robinson, who was born in Vermont and raised in Wisconsin; and Pennsylvania-born Martha Walter, who died in 1976 at age 100.

While the heyday of French Impressionism ran roughly from the mid-1860s through the mid-1880s, Impressionism flourished in the United States from the 1890s until some 20 years later.

Many American Impressionists studied in France to learn the style, which employs visible brushstrokes and minimal detail to capture the transient effects of light and color on subjects, mostly landscapes and regular people.

Impressionism was a well-promoted art form by the time the Muskegon museum opened in 1912 as the Hackley Art Gallery. It immediately and avidly started collecting works by Impressionists from both the United States and Europe, including French artists Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.

While the popularity of most art movements ebbs and flows over time, people never seem to grow tired of Impressionist works, curator Jane Connell said.

"People see it now almost as traditional art, whereas it was so revolutionary in its own time," she said.

The first French Impressionists were considered radical because they broke many long-standing rules, such as finding subject matter in their own lives instead of looking to history. They tried to depict what they saw in a few fleeting moments rather than what they observed over long periods of time. They often painted outdoors instead of inside a studio, to see how the sunlight changes during a day.

Within a short time, however, Impressionism became widely accepted. European art schools started teaching the style to their students, including some Americans who began painting that way when they returned home.

"Collectors started to collect (Impressionist works) in Europe and in this country," Connell said. "The galleries started to carry works. You started to be able to see things in Chicago as well as New York, and it all developed."

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On the Net:

Muskegon Museum of Art: http://www.muskegonartmuseum.org/

Keny Galleries: http://www.kenygalleries.com/