When the summer heat of the city became unbearable, a range of summer colonies became attractive havens. For many Americans Giverny was a favourite place. Claude Monet had settled there in 1883 and by the end of the decade, Americans had discovered its charms.
Sargent painted Monet at work on the edge of a wood in 1885. Theodore Robinson shows the marriage of another American painter, Theodore Butler, to Monet's step-daughter Suzanne Hoschedé.
The Hotel Baudy was where many of them lodged and dined, and Willard Metcalf shows a group gathered around the breakfast table. The man on the right is the writer Robert Louis Stevenson.
Other favoured summer places included resorts on the Normandy and Brittany coasts, among them Trouville, where Whistler painted the tiny figure of the realist Gustave Courbet at the edge of an expanse of sand, sea and sky.
« Previous | Next » |
Main image: Detail from John Singer Sargent, 'Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood', 1885. © Tate, London. Presented by Miss Emily Sargent and Mrs Ormond through the National Art Collections
Fund, 1925.
Top detail: Detail from Theodore Robinson, 'The Wedding March', 1892. © Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.
Bottom detail: Detail from Willard Leroy Metcalf, 'The Ten Cent Breakfast', 1887.
© Denver Art Museum, Colorado.
Gift of T. Edward & Tullah Hanley Collections, (1974.418). |
