Introduction
The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza presents the first exhibition in Spain on the dissemination of Impressionism in the United States. Curated by Katherine Bourguignon, curator at the Terra Foundation for American Art and an expert in late 19th and early 20th century French and American art, the exhibition, which has already been seen at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny and the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, will include nearly 80 paintings that allow for an analysis of the way in which North American artists discovered Impressionism in the 1880s and 1890s and its subsequent development around 1900.
In 1886 and organized by art dealer Durand-Ruel, the first major exhibition of French Impressionist art in the U S opened its doors in New York. While artists such as Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent had spent some years living and exhibiting their work in France and enjoyed close relations with painters such as Degas and Monet, it was not until this show that American painters began to make use of the new brushstroke, brilliant colours and themes of modern life characteristic of the French movement, in some cases even visiting Paris to discover it at first hand.
