Mary Cassatt, Young Girl at a Window (detail), c. 1883–1884. Oil paint on canvas; 39-1/2 x 25-1/2 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC: Corcoran Collection, museum Purchase, Gallery Fund. Image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. Public Domain.
Mary, Louisine, and Bertha: Three American Women Who Put Impressionism on the Map
Note: The museum has made the decision to deliver this course session as a virtual event. If you registered for in-person attendance, you will be refunded and only charged the fee for online access.
In the early 1880s, Parisian art gallerist Paul Durand-Ruel is on the brink of financial collapse: the French art-buying public is horrified by the modern art he insists on exhibiting. So he takes a giant gamble and sails to the United States with several hundred paintings in tow.
With art history and humanities instructor Giulia Bernardini as your guide, learn about the crucial roles played by artist Mary Cassatt and collectors Bertha Honoré Palmer and Louisine Havemeyer in ensuring the bet paid off beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, cementing the popularity of Impressionist art and the enduring artistic and cultural love affair between France and the US.
Drawn to France is a course with four sessions:
- November 30, 2021: Whistler to Cassatt: The Making of an Exhibition
- January 4, 2022: Impressionism's Summers
- January 25, 2022: Mary, Louisine, and Bertha: Three American Women who put Impressionism on the Map
- March 1, 2022: Henry Ossawa Tanner and Black Artists in Paris, c. 1900
Giulia Bernardini, MA, is an Italian-American actress and a senior instructor of art history and humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A regular guest lecturer at the Denver Art Museum and in the Boulder/Denver area on the art of the Italian renaissance and baroque and on the Parisian belle époque, she is also the founder of Wonderfeast, a boutique art travel company that specializes in on-site art, food, and culture seminars in the European cities where she grew up. To find out more about upcoming lectures or about joining Giulia in 2022 in Rome or Paris, visit www.wonderfeast.com or email her at giulia@wonderfeast.com.
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Lifelong Learning and Accessibility programs are supported by the William Randolph Hearst Endowment for Education Programs, Nancy Benson Education Endowment Fund, CenturyLink Endowment, Jim Kelley and Amie Knox Education Endowment Fund, and the Cooke-Daniels Fund. Support is also provided by the Michael and Karen Fried Community Education Fund and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD).
