Impressionist masterpieces. National Gallery of art, Washington

The triumph of French impressionist painting in the United States began in the 1880s and continues with even greater force to this day. While the mas ters of this seminal movement were struggling against the powerful opposi tion of the French art establishment, they were beginning to be warmly received by American art lovers and collectors. By the early years of this century, what had started as a trickle of impressionist paintings crossing the Atlantic became a flood.

Perhaps it was the impressionists’ commitment to freeing art from aca demic conventions that appealed to Americans; perhaps it was their fresh, light-filled vision of nature and urban life. in a distinctly modern world. In any case, American collectors and museums even tually accumulated many of the greatest works by the impressionists and their successors.

When the National Gallery of Art, through the bequest of Andrew Mellon, opened its doors in 1941, it owned only one nineteenth-century French painting among its nearly 600 works. Asked whether he intended to add Impres sionism, Mellon answered, “No, I hope others, who know this school better than I do, will contribute such works to the National Gallery.” The contributions were not long in coming. Over the next forty years, impressionist and post impressionist paintings were given to the gallery by a host of great private collec tors, including Eugene and Agnes Meyer, Chester Dale, Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mel lon Bruce (the founder’s two children), Averell Harriman, and John Hay Whit ney. And today the National Gallery’s representation of the period is among the finest in the world.

In this magnificent book, the National Gallery’s impressionist paintings are published in one volume for the first time. A selection of 48 masterpieces by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Degas, van Gogh, Gauguin, the Americans Whistler and Cassatt, and others is pre sented in single-page, full-color plates, with lively and informative commentar ies by John House, Professor of Art His tory at the University of London’s Courtauld Institute. In his introduction, William James Williams of the National Gallery explores the historical and artis tic roots of Impressionism and recounts the building of the great collection in

Washington. Covering the full range of the impres sionist era and its aftermath, the book concludes with a time line that places the 48 masterworks in the context of contemporary events in art, literature, music, politics, and science. Impression ist Masterpieces serves as a guide not only to a major collection but also to a crucial epoch in the evolution of mod ern art.