Like Snap the Whip this is an idyllic scene of a child.  It is peaceful and reminds us of summer.  Homer likely painted this in the Adirondacks or Catskills.  Where is it light?  Where is it dark?  How does the light make us feel?

Although Mary Cassatt was an expatriate, she was instrumental in bringing the Impressionist style to the U.S. Her most noted work was done in Paris under the advice and influence of Degas. Originally, she came from Pittsburgh, but in 1851, was taken to Europe with her parents. In 1858, she returned to Philadelphia where she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1864-65. She then returned to Europe, first to Spain, then to Paris, in order to further her art education. Other than two brief sojourns in America, Mary Cassatt passed her adult life in Paris. There she found fertile artistic
soil and recognition.

For the most part, Cassatt's paintings were tender, emotional, and intimate. Many revolved around the mother-child theme. Most of Cassatt’ s models were members of her family, especially her older sister, Lydia. However, each oil, no matter how personal the subject, possessed an individual color sensitivity, figural restraint and forthright reality of the sitter. About 1910, her eyesight began to fail, and by 1914, progressive blindness forced her to stop painting.

The woman in this painting is not Lydia, but it does demonstrate Cassatt’s preference for painting women in their natural environment. At the time, most artists depicted men sifting inside looking out. Cassatt liked to paint women outside, or near a window, looking inside at the domestic scene. Woman With Dog was included in the eighth and last group exhibition of the Impressionists in 1886.

  This painting is typical of many of Cassatt’s works. It shows a mother and her child in a domestic setting. Like many of her paintings, the scene is candid, not posed. Cassatt painted in an era when such things as washing your child and nursing it were just ceasing to be taboo. For many years, parents with money left these activities to nurses and nannies. Cassatt liked to show the bond formed between mother and child and used this sort of scene to demonstrate it.

Again we can see the influence of Japanese block print in the flatness of the figures, particularly the woman, the high horizon, off-center placement of figures, and the elimination of unnecessary detail.  Cassatt played with cropping in her works.  Notice how she presents an extreme close-up view and part of the boat is cut off. 

Her color scheme is different here and is more in line with the Post-Impressionists Gaughan and Van Gogh.

What does the lighting do to us in this painting?  It directs our eyes around the perimeter of the painting away from the darkly clad man along the hull of the boat, to the white sail, and then to focus on the baby at the center of the painting.  The baby is sprawled awkwardly in its mother’s lap and not in a posed position, but a natural one.  The separation in size and color between the man, who seems to pop out of the picture and the woman and baby make us ask questions about their relationship. 

Edward Weston was one of the first photographers to be accepted as an artist.  This was in part due to his association with Alfred Stieglitz, who showed his work in a famous New York gallery. Weston started out as a portrait photographer in Glendale, CA. His early work was in the style of the Pictorialists. He used a soft focus that had the feel of an Impressionist painting. He later rejected that style and focused on realism to the point of obsession. He wanted his photos to be a crisp and clear as possible. He is most famous for his studies of green peppers. Weston also photographed many landscapes of sand dunes and Point Lobos, CA.

 Stieglitz was the first photographer to have his work exhibited in American art museums. He was very supportive of modem art. After being educated in New York, the German, he lived in New York City where he founded the Photo-Secession group in 1902. The group opened a gallery in 1905 that became known as the 291 because of its location at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City. The gallery was a showcase for both American and European artists. One of the artists featured there was Georgia O’Keeffe, whom Stieglitz married in 1924.

Aside from the gallery, Stieglitz also edited and founded several magazines devoted to photography. Amongst his many accomplishments as a photographer, he developed new technological processes that allowed photos to be taken in rain, snow, or at night.

O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin and raised on her family’s farm. In 1904, she left home to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. She also studied at several other schools in America. Early in her career, she supported herself by teaching art in various schools in the South and Texas. After 1918, she devoted herself entirely to painting. Her early paintings were abstract, but in the early 1920’s, she began painting large flowers and animal bones. She said, “I’ll make them big, like the huge buildings going up.

People will be startled; they’ll have to look at them.” She also did scenes of New York and the East River. A 1929 trip to New Mexico led her to the semi-abstract paintings for which she became famous. After her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, died in 1946, O’Keeffe traveled more widely. A round the world trip inspired a series of paintings based on her views of earth, sky, and clouds.

Edward Hopper was one of Robert Henri’s most talented pupils. He sold a single painting at the Armory show, but continued to work at his own brand of Realism despite a trip to Europe and the increasing importance of Abstractiomsm in America. He was sensitive to human emotions and was acutely conscious of the loneliness of life in the big cities. He painted America from the inside out, concentrating on its feelings rather than the visibly evident. He closely observed the sadness of cheap hotel rooms, empty diners, cool nights, lonely people, and cheerless houses. Hopper traveled from place to place and made mental notes of what he saw, later to put them together to express his feelings on American life. Most of his carefully structured designs deal with American cities but are treated in a different way from those of Sheeler or Mann. He had no love for the Manhattan skyscraper world that so excited them. The massive and simplified forms of houses and buildings take on a monumental quality and the large open spaces are strongly suggestive of emptiness and loneliness. His strong light is always garish and piercing as it exposes its subjects as if putting them under a glaring spotlight.

Hopper also did some monumental landscapes and at times would try subject matter very remote from his usual interests, such as his picture of Union soldiers resting by a roadside before the battle of Gettysburg; this is probably his only painting on an historic theme. His figure draftsmanship tended to be awkward and heavy and except for a few self-portraits and studies of his wife, he seems never to have attempted a portrait.

Seven A.M presents a storefront where there is no early morning activity, juxtaposed with the menacing but beckoning woods beyond. Here, the woods may have suggested to Hopper an escape from the day’s trials, his longed for solitude.

Neill is a landscape photographer concerned with showing the deep, spiritual beauty he sees and feels in Nature. He has traveled widely through India and the Himalayas, taking photographs of people, architecture, and religious sites. In 1997, a collection of photographs, entitled Landscapes of the Spirit, was published in a book by the same name. Dawn was included in that collection. It includes images taken over fifteen years, mostly in America and Canada. It is an affirmation of the human spirit and its place within the natural world. William Neill writes, “Seeing and feeling beauty is

more vital to me than any resulting imagery.” Neill doesn’t rely solely on what the camera captures to evoke the desired emotion. Once in the developing process, he will use modem technology to manipulate the image for the desired effect. Neill, through these pictures, invites the viewer to contemplate scenes of immense beauty and experience emotional renewal.

How does the light in this make your eyes move around the work? 

Warhol took everyday images and altered them so that we can look at them differently.  This is Pop Art – use of popular images to make us think or look at them differently.  This is a grid of cans of soup.  Campbell’s soup used to be a staple of childhood lunches and He said he ate it everyday as a child.  Does this make you hungry or think of lunch?