Portrait of a Lady:
American Paintings and Photographs in France, 1870–1915

Musée d’Art Américain Giverny : April 1–July 14, 2008
Musée des Beaux-arts de Bordeaux : September 25, 2008–January 5, 2009

This exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, will feature approximately 60 paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs of women at the turn of the last century drawn primarily from French public collections. These paintings were produced by celebrated American artists such as John White Alexander, Thomas Eakins, William T. Dannat or John Singer Sargent and photographs taken by Americans Gertrude Käsebier, George Henry Seeley, Edward Steichen and Clarence H. White. They demonstrate a decorative elegance that relates to the renewal of high society portraiture during this period. Several works from the Terra Foundation for American Art collection from this same historic period will be included to enrich and complete the exhibition.

The concept of “Portrait of a Lady: American Paintings and Photographs in France, 1870–1915” followed the creation of the La Fayette online database, sponsored in 2006 by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Henry Luce Foundation. It is a catalogue of historical American paintings in French public collections. Through the La Fayette database, curators of this exhibition identified an impressive selection of representations of women produced around 1900 and located in French museums.

This exhibition will showcase these rich holdings of American art from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in French collections. Often purchased by the French government during the annual Salons, these paintings and photographs demonstrate not only the integration of numerous American artists into the official world of French art, but also the prolonged interest of public institutions for this “foreign” art. In addition, the presence of a work of art in the French national collection became a sign of prestige for American artists and assured their success in France and America. In this way, many artists (like Cecilia Beaux and Mary Cassatt) decided to donate paintings to the musée du Luxembourg so as to make certain works visible in France. Thus, in 1898 John White Alexander, whose painting The Green Bow had been purchased by the French government, offered to exchange it for his Portrait in Gray so as to be represented by a more significant picture.