Smithsonian American Art Museum
An Impressionist Sensibility: The Halff Collection
November 3, 2006 – February 4, 2007
On view are 26 paintings by such legendary American artists as William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and John Twachtman from the Halff Collection, one of the finest small private collections of late 19th- and early 20th-century American art in America. Painted during a period of great change in American history—known as the Gilded Age, these works chart how these artists responded to new ideas about life and art, which helped to bring American art into the modern era. All the artists represented studied in France (where impressionism began in the early 1870s) between the 1870s and the 1920s and the paintings showcase their distinctly American interpretation of impressionism. The exhibition reflects Hugh and Marie Halff's love of impressionist art and other turn-of-the-century works they have collected over the past 20 years.
Related book: An Impressionist Sensibility: The Halff Collection
