All language subtitles for Great Art Series 2 5of5 American Impressionism 1080p ITV

Welcome to Great Art.

For the past few years
we've been filming

the biggest exhibitions in the world

about some of the greatest artists
and art in history.

Not only do we record
these landmark shows,

but we also secure
privileged access behind the scenes

of the galleries
and museums concerned.

Then we use the exhibition
as a springboard
to take a broader look.

There's little question
that the Impressionist movement

has become
the world's favourite genre of art,

but it certainly
wasn't always the case.

To begin with, the Impressionists -
men like Manet, Renoir, Degas,
Monet, Pissarro,

and women like Morisot and Cassat -
were reviled and rejected.

But as admiration for their work
took hold,

so too did their influence spread.

Among those artists
who changed course

on being confronted
with the Impressionist movement

were a significant number
of Americans -

painters like Childe Hassam,
William Merritt Chase,

J Alden Weir and Maria Oakey Dewing.

For four decades, from 1880 to 1920,
they flourished,

and in doing so, revealed
much about their country
and its rapid change.

We travelled to America
to film an extensive exhibition

that began in Philadelphia
in Pennsylvania

and ended in Old Lyme in Connecticut.

In doing so,
we were able to make a film

that illustrates a critical stage
in American art history,

and indeed
in the broader cultural history
of the United States of America.

NARRATOR: When one thinks
of the Impressionists,

one thinks of Paris
or northern France...

..not the gardens
and landscapes of Connecticut,

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

But there is a story
to be told of American artists

learning from a movement in Europe,

but making it very much their own,

and very much reflective
of an America

that at the end of the 19th century

was undergoing enormous change.

The Artist's Garden:
American Impressionism
and the Garden Movement

was a major exhibition
that originated

at the Pennsylvania Academy
of Fine Arts in Philadelphia

and then travelled to here,

the Florence Griswold Museum
in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

It was an exhibition
that explored a fascinating

and vitally important period in art.

ANNA O MARLEY: All of the artists
included in the exhibition
are very unique.

What brings them together
is their interest

in gardens and painting outdoors.

I'm always thinking about
the connections between art

and socio-political realities.

It opens up a window
into understanding our history.

ELSA SMITHGALL: A lot of people
think the story of American art
starts in the 20th century.

We're really trying to bring back

and re-evaluate, as a field,

the importance of this period

and to really see the roots.

The whole liberation that happens,
it's freeing artists up

to think about just simply
expressing their response
to the world.

The works of these
American Impressionists

certainly reflect the moment
that they're born from,

and that they're living in.

One of the important points

that's recognised and promoted
in this "artist in the garden"
exhibition

is that while
a painting of a garden is beautiful,

it's also full of the context
of the American culture
that created it.

At the end of the Civil War in 1865,

the United States nursed
some deep and bloody wounds.

And yet the post-war era

also marks the beginning
of an extraordinary rise
in international wealth.

(BELL CLANGING)

The nation was changing

from one of exploration
to one of exploitation -

massive exploitation
of natural resources.

Fuelled by
the expansion of railroads,

shipping, oil, steel, foodstuffs,

the US became the largest economy
in the world.

(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS)

The rich didn't just get wealthy,
they became super-wealthy.

Affluent suburbs
sprang up around the cities,

and the emerging moneyed classes

quickly developed an appetite
for culture and art.

Meanwhile, a new generation
of American artists

looked to Europe for inspiration,

and in particular France.

To visiting Americans,
the most appealing art

was that of a new group
of European painters

broadly labelled the Impressionists.

These artists painted outdoors,

using unmixed colours
in strokes and dabs

to represent the effects of daylight.

They painted not dukes and saints
but fishermen and coal-carriers...

..not ancient Rome and Jerusalem,

but the train stations of Paris

and the countryside of Brittany.

Chief among the Impressionists
was Claude Monet,

who from 1883 to 1926

lived in Giverny on the river Seine
to the west of Paris.

He was an extraordinary gardener,

and at Giverny, he created
an ideal environment
in which to paint.

MARY MORTON: For Monet,
it's about creating a great motif.

The compelling driver
is aesthetic, it's visual.

It's, uh, water lilies.
It's creating this pond

and architecting, you know,
a beautiful Japanese-style bridge

so that you can paint dozens of
pictures of this particular motif.

I think it's about really,
sort of, zeroing in

on nature
but also the present moment,

and the richness
of visual perception
when you open yourself up to it

and engage in looking hard
at one thing.

American Impressionists
address the gamut of subjects,

uh, that are addressed
by the French Impressionists.

They were interested in urban life.

But the garden
was particularly important to them,

because it was a space
where one could go for retreat,

for rejuvenation,
was kind of a private space.

And so they were following
in the footsteps

or following the inspiration
of Impressionist practitioners
like Claude Monet.

Flowers and gardens
are one of the most

popular and essential,

intriguing and even challenging,
um, tropes

of American Impressionist artists.

They came to be very important

from their travels to Giverny,
to meeting Monet.

And they brought
that study of the garden
back to the United States,

and became really integral
in their approach
to plein-air painting.

The popularity of gardening,
the Garden Movement,

is very much associated
with the rise of the middle class.

There's a growing disparity
between rich and poor,

but also an emergence,
with industrialisation
and urbanisation,

of people who are filling offices
to do their work,

but they are also looking
for places to live

that can take them back,
in some cases,
to their agricultural roots.

So the garden itself
becomes an important form

for understanding the way
that Americans handled

many of the changes
associated with modern life.

Millions of new immigrants
from Europe,

America's own rural populations
transferring to the cities,

and newly freed black slaves
moving north from the southern states

all caused overcrowding

in the tenement blocks
of northeastern cities.

The more the USA industrialised
and urbanised,

the more some harked back
to a sense of rural calm.

ANNA: Philadelphia, New York,
Chicago, Boston

have a new influx of immigrants.

There is a lot of anxiety.

So the people who can afford to,

this newly emerging middle class...

And by "middle class" I mean

doctors, lawyers, artists.

..they now have the ability,
with the train lines,

to build these suburban homes
and commute into the city.

So they can live on a train line
20 minutes out of the city
and commute there,

whereas earlier in the 19th century

they would have lived
in their townhouse in the city.

And I think that the Garden Movement

is a reaction
to the industrialisation,

as well as mass immigration.

I think in the late 19th
and early 20th century,

Americans of a certain class

began to appreciate gardens
as a pastime.

And it also, for the more talented
of the people involved in it,

it became a challenge for design

and looking into the history
of garden-designing,

including, obviously, the UK.

Coming up with their own ideas
about how to design gardens,

but in addition to this,
there was this whole other movement

of women in particular

starting to write about gardens,
the romance of gardens,

and the therapy of gardens.

They talked about garden design
and how they designed their gardens,

how they maintained them,
where they got their ideas from.

And also, they were all
right up to date

on the latest developments
in horticulture.

I think artists would have been
thrilled by the kind of
colour combinations

that they saw in gardens.

But landscape is a subject in art

that has interested
practitioners for centuries.

But the subjects that were addressed
through landscapes,

especially in American art,
were wilderness subjects,

things that emphasised
nature in remote areas.

Sometimes you might have
a more pastoral adaptation

where you saw a farm,
but there would have been
a lot of green in those.

It wouldn't have been about
this sort of, you know,
chromatic contrast

that you saw in a garden.

And it's only with Impressionism,
with this new idea

that you could make
a painting about a subject

right in front of you.

MAN:
'There is nothing new under the sun.

It remains but to have
knowledge and execution,

to treat the ordinary
in the highest and simplest way.'

J Alden Weir.

'I feel more and more contented
with the isolation of country life.

To be isolated is a fine thing
and we are all near to nature.

I could see how necessary
it is to live always in the country,

at all seasons of the year.'
John Henry Twachtman.

I think American artists
were always asking

what was American about their land

and what kind of art
could they produce

that would be different from Europe.

In the early 19th century,
we have the Hudson River
school of painters,

led by Thomas Cole, and also
his student Frederic Church.

They were really looking
for landscapes
that were unique to America.

So they were often studying
in Europe but then asking themselves

what was American
about American art.

So you see them painting
scenes of the Catskills,
of the Hudson River Valley,

where they would find, still,
a lot of nature that was untouched.

And they were looking
to these landscapes

as sources of respite.

They were finding that
this untouched wilderness in nature
could provide a lot ofpeace.

With the completion
of the Transcontinental Railroad,

the nailing of the golden spike
at Promontory,

San Francisco
is connected to New York,

and the frontier is closed.

There is no frontier any more.

So this idea of the boundless,
undiscovered Eden

is not something that Americans are
really identifying with any more.

And then we're really at a time

when the cities
are so industrialised.

Artists' colonies,
as well as garden communities,

are being developed.

NARRATOR: Artists sought the company
of like-minded individuals

in locations conducive to painting.

For some,
it was the memory of Giverny

and the colony that lived
and worked in the hotel there.

Certainly, for all, it was a desire
to get back to nature,

living and breathing something
they felt so passionately about

with others who felt
exactly the same way.

Thus, at the heart
of American Impressionism

were a number of artist colonies,

notably Old Lyme, Cornish,
Appledore and Weir's Farm.

The American art colonies
were definitely started by artists

who spent most of their life
in cities, doing commissions,

like the sculptor
Augustus Saint-Gaudens,

had a workshop
in downtown Manhattan.

But remember, this was in
pre-air-conditioning days,

and New York was a sweltering horror
in the summer.

So they all were looking
for places to go to,

and he discovered
Cornish, New Hampshire

and invited all of his friends
to come up there and join him.

They went there every summer
to escape the heat of the city,

to be with their friends, to relax,
to create art.

But, I think,
for many of these artists,

gardening was an extension
of their artistic practice.

They saw gardening as an art

and they saw what they were doing as
'painting without brushes'.

That's what
Anna Lea Merritt called it.

To create a composition
through living colour
was a challenge for them.

And so I think that

that was an integral part
of their interest in colonies.

The art colonies where
the Impressionists gathered together

were very important
because they were a gathering place.

Uh, artists tended to do this,
of course, even earlier.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
wrote about artists...

American artists in Rome
in the mid-century.

And he talked about them
keeping each other warm.

And there is something to that,

and particularly,
the colonies of the Impressionists,

because they could go out together
and paint together.

(INSECTS BUZZING)

One of the most significant
of the art colonies

was that hosted by Florence Griswold.

On the Atlantic coast,
halfway between Boston and New York,

this boarding house became
a home of American Impressionist art.

The colony starts here in Old Lyme
for a couple of different reasons.

One of them is Florence Griswold,

who is an extraordinary figure
who created an important salon

for American artists
and cultural figures
here in rural Connecticut.

Florence was the daughter
of a packet-ship captain

who travelled back and forth
between New York and London,

and who retired
from the sea in the 1850s.

And so even though
she grew up in this town
on the Connecticut coast,

her father's profession brought her
perspective on a wider world.

Unfortunately, after
he retired from the sea,

the family fell on
somewhat hard times.

She and her mother ran
a school in their house for girls

and accepted boarders
starting the late 1870s.

And they closed it
in the early 1890s

when changes in women's education

made, uh, somewhat obsolete
the model that they followed here,

where women received
ornamental training

in needlework and arts like that

and less of a college
preparatory education,

which increasingly was
what people desired

for the young women
in their families.

Florence continued the practice

of welcoming in boarders
who weren't students,

and in that context,
she met the mother
and the sister of an artist

named Clark Voorhees,
who took back with him to New York

what he knew of Old Lyme.

And when he met the artist
Henry Ward Ranger,

they discussed finding
places in the country

where one could find
paintable subjects

but also the hospitality that
you would need for a nice stay.

Ranger came to Old Lyme in 1899.

He enjoyed
his experience here so much

both personally
with Florence Griswold,

her bountiful table, the society
of the people who were here,

but also the kinds of sights
that he found around town.

He would describe
the landscape around here
as reminding him of Barbizon.

He loved the oak trees
growing in this area.

And so he sets out, intentionally,

to create an art colony
in this town.

And the next year, in 1900,
with Florence Griswold's permission,

he brings back with him
a group of artist friends

and the Lyme art colony begins.

Many American Impressionist painters
were a product of the middle class.

The group that congregated
in Old Lyme

were artists who were not
at the beginning of their careers.

They were established, stable,
married for the most part,

and had reputations,
and were sort of building off of
and developing them.

Florence really helped
American Impressionism flourish

by the way that she nurtured
these group of artists,

turning her house over to them,
turning her garden over to them,

and by living in a place
that was an embodiment

of the kinds of subjects
that American Impressionists
were just so eager for.

JENNIFER: Artists came here
for a variety of reasons,

and one of those reasons
was the community

provided by the boarding house
at Florence Griswold's.

The artists could choose rooms,

and often,
married couples would take

the larger studios
and bedrooms downstairs.

Bachelors
and sometimes bachelorettes

would stay upstairs
in smaller rooms.

Meals were held in the dining-room,
but when it got very hot,

they would also eat outside
on the side porch,

and those artists called themselves
the Hot Air Club,

not only because of the heat
that would proliferate
in the dining-room

but also because of the subjects

that they could have casually
on the dining-room porch.

I think that the conversations

that artists had in Old Lyme
on the porch were wide-ranging.

They might have discussed technique
and had disagreements over that,

and we know that they did,
but I think they also
talked about all aspects

of American culture and politics.

There's a lot of discussion about,
'What is American culture?'

'What are American values?'
Questions that are raised

as you have people
arriving in larger numbers
from other parts of theworld.

And there was a feeling
that they had to

really assert an American identity

against the kind of plurality
that is brought in by immigration,

and what they promote
as a kind of American identity

is this New England identity,
a kind of Anglo-American identity.

MAN: 'Don't hesitate to exaggerate
colour and light.

Don't worry about telling lies.

The most tiresome people
and pictures

are the stupidly truthful ones.'

William Merritt Chase.

'The man who goes down in posterity

is the man who paints his own time

and the scenes of everyday life
around him.'

Childe Hassam.

AMY: This is Kalmia
by Willard Metcalf.

It's a painting
that was done in 1905,

and the name of the painting
comes from the Latin term

for mountain laurel,
kalmia latifolia.

It's a painting that's important
because it represents

Willard Metcalf's transition
from an earlier style of art

that he picked up in France.
He went to Giverny

and was actually friendly
with Claude Monet.

And he spent several years there,
off and on, in the 1880s,

before returning to America in 1888.

And it takes a long time for Metcalf
to make the transition

from a kind of softly applied paint,

the sort of richly toned
colour palette
that he used in France,

and to really, kind of, assimilate

the example of Monet's version
of Impressionism.

And, in fact, it takes Metcalf
almost 20 years to do that.

So, he was feeling
a kind of crisis in his career

by the early 1900s.

He talked about how he was suffering
nervous anxiety in the city

and he needed to go
to the country to paint.

And he ends up
at the art colony in Old Lyme,

which is where
he painted this picture,

right on the Lieutenant River behind
the boarding house where he stayed.

This was a crucial moment
for Metcalf.

It's a period he referred to
as his 'Renaissance',

when he throws off
what was impeding him
and holding him back,

and embraces Impressionism.

And in this picture that transition
is made quite apparent in the way

that the background
and the foreground

relate to one another.

The background is painted
in soft greens and blues

and purple tones,
which is very reminiscent

of works that Metcalf did in France,

with this very softly
blended and applied colours.

And there is a bit of tension
or contrast

in this work
with the bushes of kalmia

that are growing along
the banks of the river here.

This is where you see
the Impressionist coming
out of Willard Metcalf,

exploding forth in a kind of
impasto that he uses,

laying paint on thick
in unmodified dabs

to create this burst of flowers.

It's significant
that he chose kalmia

as the means
for making this transition

because it was a flower
that had a lot of significance

in early 20th-century
American culture.

It was a native species.

Old Lyme was an area known
for having bounteous groves

of mountain laurel that bloomed
each year in late June.

And it's a flower
that was really embraced

by the American Impressionists
and embraced in American culture,

because it was seen
as embodying American traits.

That it was native to the soil,

it was hardy,
its wood was very hard,

it was evergreen,
and it was spoken of

as really, kind of,
exemplifying traits

that Americans
applied to themselves.

It's analogised to being
as enduring as liberty itself

in some of the periodicals
of the time.

The patriotic spirit
with which the plant was viewed,

associating it with,
kind of, liberty

and kind of, uh, claiming
this identity, is cemented in 1907,

a couple of years
after this picture is painted,

when the flower is named
Connecticut's state flower,

after a group of women who were
a part of the Garden Movement

mobilised thousands of votes
in favour of kalmia as that flower.

This period of the Garden Movement,
of American Impressionism,

is completely embedded
in what is known

as the Progressive era
in the United States.

And the Progressive era
is an era of politics

that goes from the mid-1880s
right up until 1920,

when American women are
finally granted the right to vote.

And it's no accident
that this development

of Garden Movement culture

and women's empowerment
is happening at the exact same time,

because the garden movement
is part of a larger coterie

of Progressive-era developments.

For example, Celia Thaxter,
who is the great poet

of the garden in this period,

who grew her own garden
at Appledore,

who hosted the artist Childe Hassam
there in the summers...

She created a unique partnership

between her gardening practice
and her political activity.

She was one of the founders
of the Audubon movement.

So, the Audubon movement was founded
during this time period

to protect native species of birds.

So, Celia Thaxter, for example,
in the famous painting of her

by Hassam, is standing
in her garden, hatless.

Why ever would a gardener

stand in the mid-sun
without a hat on?

Well, that's not what any gardener
I know would do.

The reason she is doing it is

she is doing it as a conscious
political act of protest.

At that time the millinery industry
was using fauna.

They were actually
using feathers from birds

to construct these elaborate,
amazing late-19th-century hats.

But women like Celia Thaxter

who were involved
in the Audubon movement said,

'We are losing our native
species of birds.

We need to protest that.'

And having herself
photographed and painted hatless

was one of her ways
of protesting that.

Now, women gardeners
were also very involved

in being proponents
of native species,

of founding local garden clubs.

It was also a time of emerging
professionalisation for women.

So American artists become
professional visual artists.

But there is also the development
of landscape architecture,

and in this period in particular,
it becomes a moment of opportunity.

Celia Thaxter plays an equally
important part in this story.

Here, on a small island
called Appledore,

off the New Hampshire coast,

she created an art colony
of major significance.

Celia Thaxter is really
well-known in the United States.

At the time, in the 1800s,
she was quite famous,

and her poetry was the primary
first vehicle for her fame.

And then later, this artist colony
that she built up around her.

The Boston Brahmin,
as they are called...

The wealthy class
was growing at this period.

And this is a new phenomenon
in the United States.

And they have time
and space in their lives

because of their wealth
to enjoy and explore the arts.

The Transcendental movement
is also beginning now,

so there's a real connection
between religion and nature,

and the glorification
and the restorative nature

of being in wilderness.

And this is
the Industrial Revolution
in the United States.

And so the appeal
of Appledore island was a relief

from the dirt and grime of the city.

And also, at that time,
the doctors were saying,

'Go to the ocean,
and the ocean air will restore you.'

The artists who came
to Appledore island really...

..start with Celia's relationship
to the Boston scene,

which she marries into.

So, her father's business partner,
who helped fund the building

of this grand hotel,
the Appledore House,

was Levi Thaxter,
and he was from a wealthy family.

And he introduces Celia
to the Boston Brahmin scene.

And she actually meets Hassam
in Boston

before he ever comes to Appledore.

And this is where she meets
most of the artists of the day,

who then she invites to Appledore.

The inspiration for her garden

is she wants to remember
a simpler time.

It doesn't have a purpose,
it's just purely aesthetic.

It really reflects
how the gardener feels about nature,

because it's both contained
in the box and raised garden bed

and then it's also wild within that.

And she loved when the flowers
spilt out of the garden.

And I can imagine the artists
really appreciating that,

because it led to the beautiful
Hassam paintings

of Babb's Rock
with the poppies in the front.

'Let him but touch a flower

and lo, its soul is his.

Its splendours delicately bright
upon the happy page he lays,

its whole sweet history

there to live for time's delight.'

Celia Thaxter.

Childe Hassam came
for over three decades.

I mean, he clearly fell in love
with the place.

They had a very close relationship,
Celia Thaxter and Hassam.

He would stay at her house
on some summers.

And he would stay for, often,
the entire summer,

but sometimes just a few weeks
here and there.

He was clearly
so prolific in his work.

There's over 300 paintings painted
just of Appledore alone.

It's clearly an inspirational
landscape to him.

MAN: 'Art, to me,
is the interpretation

of the impression which nature
makes upon the eye and brain.'

Childe Hassam.

JENNIFER: There are several examples
in this exhibition

which shows
the changing role of women.

Women had long been
held as objects of the gaze,

and this was still a popular subject
for painters during this time.

But this exhibition shows that women
were also becoming actors.

They were associated with flowers,
but they could also be actors

as gardeners, as writers
and as designers.

In the actual physical exhibition,
when it happened at Philadelphia,

I had a section
called The Lady in The Garden.

And The Lady in The Garden was,
sort of, a double-edged title.

Because it was really about these
very idealised women as flowers.

And then there is
this whole group of images

of women on the periphery.

There's a Hassam with a woman
silhouetted against her garden

with a fishbowl.

So, she is standing there.
She is in this very decorative space

with a garden behind her and looking
at the fish swimming in their bowl.

I can't help but think
that that's an image

of what women are going through
at this time period.

They are trying to emerge
out of the house,

out of the Victorian era.
There are women who
are suffragettes.

They're fighting
for their right to vote,

they're becoming
professional artists,

becoming professional
landscape gardeners.

But they do not yet have

equality or any real
political power.
They are trying to get it.

There are also
a lot of images of women reading
on this peripheral space.

I think that's important too.

The literacy, the empowerment.

It makes you think
of all the women writers.

The publishing business
is growing by leaps and bounds.

Ladies' Home Journal is
the number one publication
in America.

It's published in Philadelphia.

House and Garden
is started in Philadelphia in 1901.

And a lot of people who are writing
for these periodicals are women.

A lot of people who are reading them
are women.

So these trends in painting
were really reflecting

a lot of social reforms
that were happening,

but people had differing
reactions to this,

and you can see that
in some of these paintings.

Many of the paintings,
you can see women in liminal spaces

where they are kind of betwixt
and between, as they were in life.

They are often in domestic settings
or looking outside.

And one example of that would be
Childe Hassam's painting

Summer Evening, from 1886.

You can see, um, he has painted
his wife Maude by a window.

And although she is inside,
she is gazing outside

and he is juxtaposing her
with this potted geranium.

So he is emphasising
the fact that women

were very much interior figures,
figures associated with the home,

but he is also showing

a kind of opportunity
by placing her by this window.

Windows, in art,
were always symbolic.

They represent some kind of
opportunity, they're aspirational.

And they can be interpreted
in various ways.

So by showing this figure
gazing outside the window,

he is really letting
the viewer explore

that she may have
some kind of mental faculty,

that these larger societal changes
were coming into

something he wanted to show
through his painting.

But still, she has her hand
on the pot of geraniums,

a kind of domesticated flower.

So it's a painting
that would appeal to both

conservative
and progressive audiences.

'I have not acquired
the latest Impressionist style

which so ably represents things

as seen from a motor-car
at full speed.

I have been obliged to sit out
for many hours daily

in freezing wind
and later in burning sun

looking long and carefully
at flower and leaf.'

Anna Lea Merritt.

There is a large group
of women artists

working in the garden
in this period.

One in particular,
Maria Oakey Dewing,

was a remarkable garden painter.

She was married
to Thomas Wilmer Dewing.

They both lived
in the artists' colony
up in Cornish, New Hampshire.

Her husband paints women
as these diaphanous flowers

in the garden, in a sort of
wonderful, mystical
blue-green palette.

What Maria Oakey Dewing does
is she was the gardener.

So she was very dedicated
to her garden.

And she said, 'To become a painter
of flowers one must bind oneself

in apprenticeship to the garden.'

So she was in there for years,
working in the garden.

And what is unique
about her paintings

is she is actually down
on the ground.

There's... You can see them all
as if you are lying down.

And there's no horizon line,

uh, there's no sky,
it's just the flowers.

And one of the contemporary critics
of that time, Royal Cortissoz,

said that what she did
was paint portraits of flowers.

So, these women artists were there.

They are remarkable,
but they are less well-known

than their male counterparts.

So, I think this period
of American Impressionism

tells us that women were growing,
like their fellow workers

in other fields,
into a professional capacity.

But, of course,
it's still an environment

in which they face
a lot of prejudice about their art,

including what kinds of subjects
are considered acceptable.

And so they make important advances

but they're still ghetto-ised
in terms of their works.

In part,
I think it is the subject matter
that is being depicted.

That we are looking
at a moment of transformation

in American society, modernisation.

And so when you think about

what kind of subject matter
they are depicting,

it's a much more contemporary view
of what life is like.

Whether it's in
the urban parks and gardens,

whether it's the new life of leisure
of the rising middle class,

they are embracing
their own culture and time

in a way that was very different
than the past had.

This is not just about
the grandiose landscapes

but it's really about
the interaction of people
within those landscapes

and settings, that it marks
a different turning point

in really capturing this
more modern moment in our culture.

The American Impressionist movement
reveals to us

about America at that time

that there was, I think,
a real optimism,

a sort of faith in the present

that Americans felt
about their society.

It's an era where there is
really intensive change,

industrialisation, urbanisation,
fight for women's rights...

And as much turmoil and upheaval
as those kinds of changes cause,

there is still, I think,
a kind of optimism

about America and its potential.

American Impressionists
are showing the vitality of cities.

They're showing the beauty of parks
and personal gardens.

And that's not to say
that they are doing that

and ignoring the strife and tumult
of the world that they live in,

but their very selection
of those subjects,

they sort of touch points
of contemporary culture,

are still ones that they can view
in a positive light.

So you may be seeking respite

from the pressures of urban life
in your garden,

but that doesn't mean
that you can't celebrate it.

I think that
in times that are tough,

that these gardens were oases.

The idea that we need this space

in which to reflect, in which to
find beauty again and find meaning.

In this moment where, I think,
people are seeking beauty
and seeking retreat

and seeking
a more peaceful environment,

in a way, carving it out
even within the hustle and bustle

of these increasingly growing
industrialised metropolises

like New York, for example.

From looking at these paintings,
the viewer can really see a window

into an America that has become
an industrialised nation,

but is developing a love

of the suburbs
and a sort of retreat.

These artists really were
thinking about the issues

of urbanisation, of immigration.

This was really in the backdrop
and in the minds of everyone.

The appearance of gardens
in American Impressionism

is something that goes beyond
their aesthetic appeal,

or how we react to them
as these natural spaces.

When you look
at a landscape that shows

a kind of grandmother's garden,
an old-fashioned garden,

that it's not just about the flowers

but the way that these flowers
promote a certain vision
of American culture,

that they address topics
like immigration...

And I do think that
that's something that we don't

and really can't look at
in the same light today,

that we have...
much more of a sense of outrage

about the idea of not accommodating

and assimilating
and embracing immigration.

It feels a bit uncomfortable to talk
about these artists' dislike

of the ways that their world
was changing.

But I think those are the issues
that governed life

during this time period.

And the garden was meant
to be a space where the individual

could resolve some
of those tensions for themselves.

The garden landscape is a tool

for managing contemporary life
and remaining part of it.

For four decades, these artists,

not only in the northeastern
United States but across the country,

reflected their time
and their society in their art.

But the 20th century
brought new challenges,

new developments
and new artistic responses.

Some sought to reflect
a harsher side of life -

poverty, exploitation, oppression.

Others decided
art itself needed a revolution

and something much more contemporary
in approach than Impressionism.

By the 1920s American Impressionism
was wilting.

But to understand
the history of American art,

to understand the history of America,

one should indeed
look to these artists

when they were in full bloom.

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