Museum of Fine Arts host extensive American impressionism exhibition

There was a time when impressionist art was known to be as bold as contemporary art — meaning when it debuted, hardly anyone had the courage to take a chance on it.

It was too daring.

But today, American impressionism is one of our country’s most celebrated art periods.

See more than 100 paintings, prints and drawings from the era in “Transcending Vision: American Impressionism 1870-1940” at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. The art, featuring some of the leading painters of that time, comes from Bank of America’s extensive collection.

Seventy artists are represented in the exhibition, which will be at the museum through January 2011. They include George Inness, Thomas Moran and the man who become an early influence on Georgia O’Keeffe — Arthur Wesley Dow.

The art takes a look at American artists’ lives at that time.

“The exhibition really is a great survey of what was going on after the Civil War when so many artists went to France, especially Paris, to study,” said Jennifer Hardin, chief curator at the museum.

The impressionist movement was at its height in France during the late 1800s, but it took a while to find popularly in America.

“People hated it,” said Hardin. “Even some of the artists that we have in the exhibition — when they first saw the impressionists, they couldn’t understand what it was about.”

The artists would write to their parents from Europe, telling them how terrible impressionism was, Hardin said. It’s only after they explored the ideas of optical mixing, broken brush work, how light effects color — the building blocks behind the impressionist movement — that they began to slowly embrace the art form.

American Impressionism artists often painted in oil with scenic backgrounds of parks, countrysides and other landscapes within the United States. Moran’s “View of Fairmont Waterworks” and Herman Herzog’s “Florida Palms” are prime examples in the exhibition.

One artist who wasn’t a big fan of impressionism was Inness, said Hardin. Critics were quick to label his work as impressionist, though, because his art possessed impressionist traits of being fuzzy and unresolved. But he wasn’t creating his art with impressionisms’s scientific brush stroke methods. Instead, he was inspired by his heart.

“He hated impressionism because he felt that art should be spiritual and objective,” Hardin said.

On the flip side of Inness was Lila Cabot Perry. She was one of a few highly successful women impressionists during her time with works such as 1907’s “The Poacher.” Perry, who spent time in Paris, where she exhibited her work, had artist ties to epic French impressionist painter Claude Monet.

When asked if American impression still has a place in today’s modern art world, Hardin said that most people tend to appreciate it from a historical perspective alone.

But within the greater Tampa Bay area, that appreciation goes much deeper when it comes to the technical ability of impressionisms’s historic artists.

“We have so many artists in our area who are wonderful painters,” Hardin said. “When they look at these paintings, there’s a lot of understanding and inspiration.”