Gallery 87-Duveneck. Here are works by Frank Duveneck, who like Chase studied at Munich. Sound in draughtsmanship, steady, and well-thought out, they maintain a remarkable standard of excellence. It is instructive to step from here into the adjoining large gallery, where the French influence is predominant.
Gallery 88-Redfield. In the winter scenes of E. W. Redfield one finds the sure touch of a master of the new and vigorous school of American landscapists. Redfield has modified Impressionism, clinging to a certain reality, and yet achieving the sparkling atmospheric effects of the luminists.
Gallery 89-Tarbell. In contrast to Hassam and Redfield and Twachtman is Edmund C. Tarbell, who has taken but little from the Impressionist group. His most characteristic and most appealing work can be seen in the canvases on wall A, beautifully lighted interiors which show the academic tendency, but in a new and delightful way.
Gallery 90-Keith. This collection of canvases, with its sameness of subject and arrangement, is hardly typical of the late William Keith at his best. He was the western representative of the Inness-Wyant school of the late Nineteenth Century, though he leaned more to the romantic than did the others.
Gallery 93-Twachtman. Here are the works of a painter who is closer to Monet than to the more vigorous American school of modified Impressionism. It is well to study one wall, A perhaps, and then to go to the Redfield and Hassam rooms, and then to the group of Monets, to see the various ways in which Impressionism has spread.
Gallery 26-Whistler. The Whistler room is quite appropriately placed with the foreign historical rooms, rather than with the other one-man galleries-as if Whistler should be grouped with the influences rather than the influenced. The room contains none of the artist's finest paintings, but is well representative of the several sides of his work. Wall D shows Whistler the portraitist, with "his faces and figures that emerge from a soft black background, very much as one sees a person in the gathering twilight." On walls A and B it is Whistler the colorist, and on wall B especially, Whistler the rediscoverer of Japanese color and figure composition. On wall D is the "Study of Jo," an uncharacteristic early work, which shows the influence of Courbet.
American Section: Prints
The American prints occupy rooms 29 to 34, along the west wall of the building just south of the central vestibule. The exhibit is very representative, and contains both historical and contemporary sections.
Gallery 29-Prints by Whistler. Here is a collection of Whistler's etchings and lithographs, with a few drawings. The distinguishing quality is an exquisite delicacy.
Gallery 30-Historical Prints. In this room one can trace the development of American engraving and etching from the beginnings to the present day. Starting on wall D one finds steel engraving illustrated from the days of Paul Revere to its decadence; then the history of wood-engraving to its flowering in Cole and Wolf; early and recent American etching; and a few modern copper engravings and lithographs.