Impressionists painting labor.(Current and coming)

Despite the declaration made in 1883 by the American impressionist Theodore Robinson that American life was for the most part "unpaintable," many of his contemporaries found endless potential in depicting Americans at work and at leisure, mostly in outdoor settings. True to his conviction, Robinson departed for France nearly a year later, and when he returned to the United States in 1892 many of the country's leading impressionists were debating what constituted appropriate subject matter.

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In reaction to the dominance of French art, Robinson and many of his contemporaries began looking for quintessentially American subjects. The rural American landscape--New England farmland, painted barns, workers in the fields, sun-dappled meetinghouse spires, and snow-covered meadows--soon found their way onto canvas along with strollers in urban parks, boats in sheltered coves, women in domestic interiors, and scenes of workers and work environments. The latter is the subject of the exhibition of forty-six paintings on view at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, until January 8, 2006, American Impressionism: The Beauty of Work. The curator, Susan B. Larkin, also wrote the accompanying catalogue.

The exhibition is divided by the settings for labor: the city; the countryside; the waterfront; factories, mills, and quarries; and the home. These paintings show the uplifting aspect of labor; not the gritty side that was later the subject matter of the early modernists, such as members of the Ashcan school. The artworks on view are tranquil and in most cases are not vehicles for social commentary. For example, Julian Alden Weir executed six views of the Willimantic Linen Company (later called the American Thread Company) in Connecticut (one of which is illustrated below) between 1893 and 1903. As Larkin points out, the site was of personal significance to Weir, because the company dominated the ...