Letters to the Editor
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‘Americans in Paris’
In regard to Joao Ribas’s review of the “American Artists and the Louvre” exhibition [Arts & Letters, Thursday, August 17, 2006]. As the Louvre no longer exhibits paintings created roughly after 1850, it is somewhat misleading to say that the Louvre’s collection of American art has “dwindled to three paintings,” by Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Cole, all creations of the early nineteenth century. In Paris, art of the later 19th century is now shown at the Musee d’Orsay. Its collection includes Whistler’s iconic Arrangement in Gray and Black (“Whistler’s Mother”) and Winslow Homer’s haunting “Summer Evening.” Both paintings take on added meaning when exhibited at the Orsay with the romantic/realist works of the period, which were accepted for exhibition at the official salons, while the impressionists were not. Overall, the ‘official’ art of that period seems to take on deeper meaning today, as a precursor of expressionism and symbolism, than we are led to believe by the conventional wisdom of art history texts which state that the impressionist movement is the precursor of modernism, while they dismiss much of the other art of the period.
PAUL FORMAN
New York, N.Y.
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