Eakins, Whistler and Cecilia Beaux are also represented with strong work. And, of course, Sargent, who, like Whistler, was practically a foreigner, painted Miss Carey Thomas, President of Bryn Mawr College as the prototype of the dedicated, educated American woman. On the other hand, Catherine Vlasto, with her tiny waist and boneless fingers on the piano, is the image of cosmopolitan elegance. The sappy champ is Charles Courtney Curran. His Peris, bare-breasted fallen angels, float dreamily among big white roses.
Landscapes are generally American in subject and mood.
George Inness knows what to do with light and Childe Hassam renders an instantly recognizable Fifth Avenue in Winter. In Nicodemus, Henry Ossawa Tanner, the only African American in the show, contrasts blue twilight illuminating figures on the roof of a building with golden light emanating from the interior, in a way that only a person who has visited the Middle East would be likely to imagine. All rights reserved.