Beginning in the mid-1860s, hundreds of aspiring American painters were attracted to Paris by the quality of its art schools and the city’s emergence as an artistic epicenter. Although the main purpose of their studies in Paris was the mastery of academic principles, some artists soon became invigorated by the avant-garde approach of the French Impressionists, who made their debut in a private group exhibition in the spring of 1874. Rejecting academic formulas, the French Impressionists embraced familiar modern subjects as well as rapid, plein-air painting. As awareness and appreciation of Impressionism grew among American collectors and critics by the mid-1880s, American painters increasingly experimented in the new style; by the 1890s, American Impressionism reached its apogee.

American Impressionists Abroad and at Home examines the work of twenty-eight American artists living in France and the United States, who were profoundly influenced by French Impressionism. The thirty-nine paintings included here reveal the diverse responses of the artists to everyday life in a period of dynamic social and economic change. Like their French counterparts, they adopted looser brushwork and a light-saturated palette to depict landscapes, urban scenes, and domestic interiors. Among the artists featured are Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent.