Many Americans who came to Paris spoke little or no French, and struggled even to order a meal. They tended to create American colonies, isolated from the French way of life. Others, such as John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler and Mary Cassatt, all fluent French speakers, had less trouble feeling 'at home' in Paris.

Mary Cassatt's views of domestic life and of young women at the theatre capture a sense of pleasure and easy enjoyment of her adoptive home.

Sargent demonstrates the ease he felt in Paris in his moonlit view of the Luxembourg Gardens, with a quintessentially French couple strolling arm in arm across the gravelled terrace. His teacher, Carolus-Duran, epitomised the elegance and dandyism to which many Americans in Paris aspired.

James McNeill Whistler moved between Paris and London, at ease with avant-garde art circles in both cities. He always fixed his sights on success in Paris, and attained this with his famous portrait of his mother, 'Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1', painted in his Chelsea studio, and now the most famous American in Paris.

To find out more about Whistler's life and work, read his correspondence online at the Centre for Whistler Studies.

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