Masters of Light: Selections of American Impressionism from the Manoogian Collection

Americans were introduced to Impressionism by the French in the 1880s. They explored its expressive potential and debated its merits in the 1890s, and by the turn of the twentieth century, American painters had seized the style for their own. Masters of Light: Selections of American Impressionism from the Manoogian Collection accompanies an exhibition of the same name organized by Jennifer A. Bailey and Lucinda H. Gedeon for the Vero Beach Museum of Art. Included are thirty examples of American Impressionist painting by the seminal artists who redefined the movement for American audiences, including Frank W. Benson, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Williard Leroy Metcalf, Theodore Robinson, John Singer Sargent, John Henry Twachtman, and others.
Featuring contributions by some of the clearest voices and leading authorities on American Impressionism, Masters of Light brings into the spotlight brilliant and rarely seen paintings while illuminating their place in the larger currents of American art history. An essay by Kevin Sharp, "The Americanization of Impressionism," examines the unintentional circumstances and deliberate efforts that transformed Impressionism from an expression of the French vanguard into an international style, and eventually, into a peculiarly American enterprise.