The book explores the evolution of genre painting in mid-19th century America, highlighting its narrative scenes that reflect everyday life and distinctively American characters shaped by racial, regional, and class differences. It examines key influences from Dutch and English schools, showcased through paintings from the Louvre, and features three notable American works. Themes such as character development, sensory experiences, and the impact of music and narrative are analyzed, alongside the reproduction of genre paintings through prints. This accompanies a collaborative exhibition by prestigious art institutions.
In The Commerce of Vision, Peter John Brownlee integrates cultural history,
art history, and material culture studies to explore how vision was understood
and experienced in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The Terra Foundation for American Art uses its impressive collection of American art spanning a two-hundred-year period to fulfill its mission. Since the Foundation's establishment in 1978, it has sought to share the collection's extraordinary pieces by renowned American artists like Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Edward Hopper with an international audience, encouraging the study of American art around the world. Conversations with the Collection helps to realize the Foundation's mission of serving as a "museum without walls," bringing art and scholarship to a global audience. The handbook entries and scholars' responses to the artworks that comprise these Conversations provide fascinating insight not only into the collection and its holdings, but also into the Foundation's history of making these works accessible to art historians and art lovers beyond the United States. The texts achieve a range of objectives, describing the significance of individual pieces in the collection, movements and themes that provide context for these works, and the Foundation's innovative objective of bringing its collection to an international audience. Indeed, this distinctive handbook demonstrates the success of the Foundation's mission: the works in its collection have had an impact on worldwide audiences, leading to a richer appreciation for American art.
