American Impressionism at the Thyssen-Bornemisza

Written by Marisa Carrero
Published: November 14, 2026

Tres hermanas Tarbell

The impressionist painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, among many others, have just toured museums such as the Musee des impressionnismes in Giverny or the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. However, the true reason for this journey is not here in Europe, but in an old exhibition of French Impressionism organized in New York back in 1886, thanks to which many American artists discovered a new way of using the brush, of capturing the fleeting moment, of touching on new themes in their painting, coming from the other side of the “pond”.
These artists, “impressed” by what reached them from France, had to adapt their paintings, transform what they learned from the French masters into their own language, a language full of “the speed, spontaneity and impressionist freshness that the Americans knew how to import”, as Guillermo Solana, chief curator of the Thyssen museum, tells us.

hassam Grand Prix Day1887 Hassam pabellon de horticultura

Some of them simply let themselves be carried away by the force of the exhibition that the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel brought to their city. Others, however, had visited Paris, had met Degas, Monet, and had exhibited their paintings in various shows, such as Mary Cassatt, “perhaps the only true impressionist”, as Katherine Bourguignon, curator of the exhibition, points out, since she participated in four of the eight exhibitions that took place in Paris between 1879 and 1886, represented here with works such as Summer or Jenny with her Sleepy Child. Also John Singer knew first-hand what the painting of those impressionists meant, admiring some of them to the point of idolatry, such as Monet, whom he immortalized in the painting Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood, and which we can see in this exhibition alongside some of the works of his idol, Meadow at Giverny or Haystacks near Giverny.

cassatt-summertime monet junto al bosque

The Thyssen museum has managed to have among its rooms, for the first time in Spain, the work of those American impressionist painters, who managed to increase the popularity of Impressionism, adapting it to American themes. James Abbott, McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, Dennis Miller Bunker, Theodore Robinson or Edmund C. Tarbell present in this show their way of understanding Impressionism, of presenting the environment in which they were, the society in which they lived, through works such as Horticultural Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago or Three Sisters. A Study in June Sunlight. The Thyssen-Bornemisza museum has managed, in this show, to show us that connection between these two types of Impressionism and, to do so, presents us both the works of the American artists and those of the French masters: “whom they did not copy but in whom they found inspiration”.

the-kimono

American Impressionism
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Temporary exhibitions hall
From 4 November to 1 February 2015

American Impressionism at the Thyssen-Bornemisza

You may also like