Nineteenth-century art in Europe and the Americas evolved in relative sync. Neoclassism, which was the overriding style around 1800, is represented in the Currier Museum’s collection historical narrative paintings (Bernard Duvivier), formal portraits (Louis Gauffier; Hiram Powers) and decorative arts (Boston and Sandwich Glass Company; Piranesi table). The style of these works was inspired by the excavations at the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which had been buried since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
The development of Romanticism, which was in opposition to rigorously ordered Neoclassicism, is expressed in the landscape paintings of John Constable, Thomas Cole, Jasper Cropsey, and Frederick Church. Romantic artists stressed the sublime and the uncontrollable power of nature, its unpredictability and extremes. The related movement of Orientalism, in which artists explored cultures and peoples they believed to be exotic and unfamiliar, is represented in the collection by artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Realism in Europe and the United States was manifest primarily in portraiture and genre. A French term, genre is used to refer to scenes of lower- and middle-class characters that were often humorous and didactic or moralizing. Artists such as Lilly Martin Spencer cast a critical eye on domestic life from a personalized perspective. In paintings by Charles Caleb Ward and others, labor is a common metaphor for the virtue of industry, yet the artist also included a secondary message; the importance of cooperation as a key element in securing prosperity and domestic harmony.
The Impressionist movement dominated the last quarter of the century and remained prevalent well into the early 20th century. The Currier Museum’s collection includes an important transitional painting by the most influential artist of this period, Claude Monet. Executed five years before the term Impressionism was coined, Bridge at Bougival signaled a new era in his art, and by extension, of those whom he would influence, in which outdoors, or plein-air, painting took precedence. The artist’s keen interest in the transformative effects of natural light were exhaustively explored. All the features of the composition are built up from short, broken brushstrokes that transform the canvas into a flickering surface of light and shadow, which would later become a defining characteristic of Impressionism. Monet’s style would influence a generation of American artists, including Childe Hassam and Edmund Tarbell.
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Please note that only a small fraction of the collection is on view at a given time, and the galleries are rotated often. If you want to know if a specific work is currently on view, please write or call ahead.