'Americans In Paris, 1860-1900' At Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston

BOSTON, MASS.

:In the decades following the Civil War, ambitious American artists flocked to Paris - the world's art capital - to study, hone their skills and try to establish reputations. Some, enrolled in the city's many academies and ateliers, sought to improve their work with academic instruction. More established artists sought to participate in the prestigious annual Paris Salons and other exhibitions to help further their careers.

Some made Paris their permanent home, forming part of a significant expatriate community in the French capital. As novelist Henry James famously observed of the "irresistible city" in 1887, "It sounds like a paradox, but it is a very simple truth, that when today we look for American art, we find it mainly in Paris. When we find it out of Paris, we at least find a good deal of Paris in it."

The majority of the American artists who spent time in Paris eventually returned to the United States, adapting their experiences and French-influenced styles to depicting the American scene. Melding academic draftsmanship with brilliant colors borrowed from French Impressionism, these artists set new directions for the nation's art.

What these Nineteenth Century American painters found in Paris and the French countryside, how they responded to their training and experiences, what they retained from this overseas exposure and how they applied French influences to art in the United States is the subject of a stunning and informative traveling exhibition, "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900."

Organized by the National Gallery, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900" comprises nearly 100 paintings that represent some of the finest of American masterpieces. After opening at the National Gallery earlier this year, the exhibition is at the MFA through September 24, and at the Met October 17-January 28. The curatorial team includes the National Gallery's Kathleen Adler, the MFA's Erica E. Hirshler and the Met's H. Barbara Weinberg.

Organized both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition opens with a section called "Picturing Paris," illustrating the attractions of the historic city.

Pennsylvania native Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), whom curator Hirshler calls perhaps the "most French of all the painters in Paris," often depicted the glamour and excitement of Parisian cultural pursuits. Her bright and luminous "Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge," 1879, shows a radiant, red-haired young woman - presumably an American - dressed to the nines amid the opulence of an evening at a Parisian theater.

French influences are evident in the unusual perspective, cropped composition and informality of Cassatt's "Little Girl in a Blue Armchair," 1878. Her elegant apartment in Paris was the site for "The Tea," circa 1880, showing Cassatt's sister and a visitor communing in the well-appointed space, as well as affectionate portraits of her mother, brother and nephew. She settled permanently in France.