The Gilded Age Treasures from the Smithsonian's American Art Museum

This volume features artists who brought a new sophistication and elegance into American art in the three decades before World War I. Wealthy industrialists eager to acquire culture began to patronize native artists who had achieved international recognition. John Singer Sargent, Irving Wiles and Cecilia Beaux created portraits of these new patrons, while John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens made luxurious adornments for their homes. One group of painters - including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Charles Sprague Pearce - responded especially to the fascnation with exotic Middle Eastern, Egyptian or "Oriental" cultures that characterized this age of international imperialism. The educated and refined aspects of Gilded Age culture are expressed here in Renaissance-inspired paintings by Abbott Thayer and Mary Cassatt. Romantic literary works by visionary Albert Pinkham Ryder symbolize the idealized strivings of this generation, while the rugged masculine landscapes of Winslow Homer emblemize the struggle and conflict that marked this period of contending social and industrial forces.