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	The Family, 1893, Mary Cassatt

Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past June 19–September 21, 2008 SAM Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries

Inspiring Impressionism, featuring nearly 100 works of art, explores the links between the Impressionists and the major European art historical movements that preceded them.

Beneath the Impressionists' commitment to capturing contemporary life, there lay a deep exploration of the European art of the early 19th century and of the centuries that came before. The Impressionists learned from art historical sources by making painstaking oil copies executed at museums such as the Louvre. These copies, as well as drawings and sketchbook studies by the Impressionists, are shown with the old masters' works they copied.

The exhibition then unfolds into a series of subject groups—portraits, still lifes, landscapes, interiors and nudes—with specific comparisons drawn between Impressionist works and earlier paintings, as well as broader connections related to issues of subject, composition and technique. These thematic groupings are punctuated with small sections on Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne, three artists who drew heavily on art historical sources.

–Chiyo Ishikawa, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting & Sculpture

Listen to the audio guide that accompanied this exhibition.

The Family, 1893, Mary Cassatt, American, 1844–1926, oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 26 in., Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 71.498

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