Soft landscape painting of a path of wheat fields in the foreground and a blue sea and sky in the background
Image Credit

Claude Monet, Path in the Wheat Fields at Pourville, 1882. Oil on canvas; 23 x 30 ¾ in. (58.4 x 77.5 cm). Frederic C. Hamilton Collection, 2016.365

European and American Art Before 1900

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Claude Monet, Path in the Wheat Fields at Pourville, 1882. Oil on canvas; 23 x 30 ¾ in. (58.4 x 77.5 cm). Frederic C. Hamilton Collection, 2016.365

Overview

The department of European and American Art Before 1900 oversees a collection that includes more than 3,000 artworks and is composed of painting, sculpture, and works on paper, with significant strengths in early Italian Renaissance, 19th century French painting, and British art from 1400 to 1900.

The Denver Art Museum began acquiring notable examples of European art as early as the 1930s, with donations from Samuel H. Kress, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, and the Havemeyers, to name a few. Their generosity helped initiate a collection that grew in time through gifts and purchases.

Highlights

Throughout the 1950s, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim donated a significant collection of Old Master paintings, and in 1954, as one of 18 regional museums, the museum was chosen by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to receive a gift of 33 paintings and four sculptures. Dating from the mid-1300s to mid-1600s, it was the first large collection of Old Masters to be shown in Denver. Additional gifts came from Marion G. Hendrie and the Charles Bayley, Jr. Collections.

French painting from the 19th century is well represented thanks largely to the Helen Dill Bequest, as well as donations by T. Edward and Tullah Hanley. In 2014, Denver-based philanthropist Frederic C. Hamilton made a transformative gift to the DAM with the bequest of 22 Impressionist masterworks, by, among others, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Caillebotte, and the museum’s first paintings by Van Gogh and Cézanne to enter the collection.

In 2018, a major gift of British masterworks from the Berger Collection Educational Trust (BCET), the largest gift of European Old Masters since the museum received the Kress Collection in the 1950s, added 65 artworks of great significance to our holdings, making the DAM one of the greatest repository of British art in the United States. These include works by Sir Anthony van Dyck, Sir Peter Lely, George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, Benjamin West, Angelica Kauffman, Thomas Jones, and John Constable, as well as significant examples from the Tudor era.

In 2019, 44 works on paper from the collection of Dr. Esmond Bradley Martin, including examples by such renowned artists as Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and three rare works on paper by Claude Monet, were generously gifted to our Museum.

The American holdings include works by Thomas Cole, Edward Hicks, Ralph Blakelock, and George Inness, as well as Americans who spent time abroad such as Willard Metcalf, Winslow Homer, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Mary Cassatt, among others.

Department Staff

Angelica Daneo, Chief Curator and Curator of European Art Before 1900

A native Italian, Angelica Daneo is chief curator and curator of European art before 1900. Her experience includes posts at the Smithsonian Institution and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Among her projects, Daneo curated Cities of Splendor: A Journey Through Renaissance Italy; Court to Café: Three Centuries of French Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum, and Drawing Room: An Intimate Look at French Drawings from the Esmond Bradley Martin Collection. She was the organizing curator of Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance in 2016 and co-curated Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature in 2019. She is the author of The Kress Collection at the Denver Art Museum and the Companion to European Painting before 1800. She is editor and author of the exhibition catalog Glory of Venice and the co-editor and author of the exhibition catalog Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature. Growing up in Italy close to the French border, she developed a passion for Italian Renaissance art and French Impressionism, which are the focus of her research.

Emily Willkom, Curatorial Assistant

Emily Willkom is the Curatorial Assistant for European and American Art Before 1900. Since receiving her master’s in museum studies in 2009 from the University of Leicester, Willkom has held a variety of museum positions, including building coordinator at Philbrook Downtown, a Philbrook Museum of Art satellite location housing part of the Eugene B. Adkins collection; exhibitions and publications assistant at the Gilcrease Museum; and curatorial and preparatory assistant at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Since joining the DAM's curatorial team in 2015, Willkom has worked on several major exhibitions including Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio, Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance, Rembrandt: Painter as Printmaker, Degas: A Passion for Perfection, and Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature.

Lauren Thompson, Interpretive Specialist

Lauren Thompson is Interpretive Specialist for European and American Art Before 1900 and for Western American art at the Denver Art Museum, where she has been interpretation lead on Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance, Degas: A Passion for Perfection, and Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington, among other exhibitions. Prior to coming to the DAM, she served as director of programs at the Ann Arbor Art Center, and worked at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston where she was named Museum Educator of the Year in 2011 by the Texas Art Education Association. Lauren received her bachelor's in art history and communication from Trinity University and her master's in art history from the University of Denver.

Collection Highlights

Waterlilies or The Water Lily Pond (Nymphéas)

Claude Monet

Waterlilies or The Water Lily Pond (Nymphéas)

Claude Monet, Waterlilies or The Water Lily Pond (Nymphéas), 1904. Oil paint on canvas; 34⅝ × 36 in. (88 × 91.4 cm). Denver Art Museum: Funds from Helen Dill bequest, 1935.14 

Path in the Wheat Fields at Pourville (Chemin dans les blés à Pourville)

Claude Monet

Path in the Wheat Fields at Pourville (Chemin dans les blés à Pourville)

Claude Monet, Path in the Wheat Fields at Pourville, 1882. Oil on canvas; 23 x 30 ¾ in. (58.4 x 77.5 cm). Frederic C. Hamilton Collection, 2016.365

The Lesson in the Garden (La Leçon au jardin)

Berthe Morisot

The Lesson in the Garden (La Leçon au jardin)

Berthe Morisot, The Lesson in the Garden (La Leçon au jardin), 1886. Oil paint on canvas; 23 5/16 × 28 7/8 in. (23.8 × 28.9 cm). Frederic C. Hamilton Collection, bequeathed to the Denver Art Museum

 

 
Dance Examination (Examen de Danse)

Edgar Hilaire Degas

Dance Examination (Examen de Danse)

Edgar Degas, Dance Examination (Examen de Danse), 1880. Pastel on paper;
24 1/2 × 18 in. (62.2 × 45.7 cm). Anonymous Gift, 1941.6

The Crucifixion

British artist

The Crucifixion

This picture of the Crucifixion of Jesus dates from a time when England was Roman Catholic. It is one of very few paintings to survive the widespread destruction of religious imagery following Henry VIII’s establishment of the Church of England. Painted on a panel of oak wood, its small size suggests it was made as an altarpiece for a private chapel or for personal devotion. Jesus is shown nailed to the cross, wearing a crown of thorns. In the foreground at left is the Virgin Mary, her swooning body supported by one of the Holy Women. Behind the Virgin the beardless figure of St. John the Evangelist gazes up at Jesus while reaching out to support Mary. In the foreground at right stands a Roman centurion, depicted as a fashionable fourteenth-century gentleman. The picture was painted in the International Style, so named because of its wide popularity throughout Europe and England in the late Middle Ages. The elegant, refined style was characterized by slender, graceful figures and attention to luxurious materials – fabrics, jewels, and gold.

British artist 
The Crucifixion, about 1395
Tempera and oil paint with gilded tin relief on oak panel 
Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2020.7

Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl

John Singer Sargent

Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl

John Singer Sargent 
American, 1856–1925
Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl, 1878   
Oil on cardboard 
Signed, inscribed, and dated by the artist at lower right, To my friend Hyde / souvenir of / John S. Sargent / Capri 1878. 
Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2018.21

John Singer Sargent painted this intimate study of Rosina Ferrara, whom he met on the island of Capri, off the coast of Naples, Italy, when he was just twenty-two. She briefly became his most frequent model, the subject of numerous sketches and finished paintings. Rosina’s southern European looks appealed to Sargent – his biographer Evan Charteris described her as “a magnificent type, about seventeen years of age, her complexion a rich nut-brown, with a mass of blue-black hair, very beautiful” – but here she emerges not as an object but as a fully human person. 

John Singer Sargent 
American, 1856–1925 
Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl, 1878 
Oil paint on cardboard 
Signed, inscribed, and dated by the artist at lower right, To my friend Hyde / souvenir of / John S. Sargent / Capri 1878. 
Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2018.21 

Dream of Arcadia

Thomas Cole

Dream of Arcadia

Thomas Cole, Dream of Arcadia, About 1838
Oil paint on canvas; 38 ⅝ × 62 ¾ in. (98.1 × 159.4 cm)
Denver Art Museum: Gift of Mrs. Lindsey Gentry, 1954.71
Image Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum

Madonna and Child with Saints

Bernardo Zenale

Madonna and Child with Saints

Bernardo Zenale, Madonna and Child with Saints, about 1510.  Oil paint and tempera paint on panel; 71 x 48 1/2 in. Denver Art Museum: Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1961.173

 

Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase

Maria van Oosterwyck

Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase

Maria van Oosterwyck, Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, about 1670s. Oil paint on canvas; 29 × 22 in. (73.7 × 55.9 cm). Funds by exchange from T. Edward and Tullah Hanley in honor of longtime director, Otto Bach and his wife Cile Bach, 1997.219.

Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VI)

Hans Holbein the Younger, studio

Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VI)

This portrait of Henry VIII’s only son, Edward (1537-1553), by his third wife, Jane Seymour, was painted when the boy was about fourteen months old. Although no more than a toddler, Edward is portrayed as a small adult, standing in an adult pose, wearing adult dress, his right hand raised in the gesture of an orator. When Henry died in 1547, Edward became king at age nine, ruling in name only under the guidance of a council of advisors. This picture was painted by the German-born artist Hans Holbein the Younger, whose arrival in London in 1532 swept away the medieval-looking portrait style then current in England.

Hans Holbein the Younger and studio, Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VI), about 1538. Oil paint on panel; 22 3/4 × 17 in. (57.8 × 43.2 cm). Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2021.23.

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Browse objects from the European and American art collection online.

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Exhibition History

Explore exhibitions organized by the European and American Art Before 1900 department.

Featured Articles

Dive deeper into the stories behind some of the artworks in the collection by reading through articles written by our curators, conservators, and museum staff.

Department History

The department of European and American Art before 1900, as it is now known, started as two distinct departments in 1947, consisting of Mediterranean and European art, and American art. After little to no change in the structure of the curatorial departments for the following 40 years, in 1989 then-newly appointed director, Lewis I. Sharp urged a reorganization of the curatorial division. This resulted in the formation of a separate modern and contemporary department, now caring for artworks created after 1945, while a newly formed painting and sculpture department was charged with stewarding European and American art, from Antiquities to collections created prior to 1945. Most recently, in 2019, to better reflect the nature of the collections, the department was renamed European and American Art before 1900.

Throughout the decades, a number of curators and scholars have contributed to shape the department’s collections, exhibitions and publications. The Denver Art Museum would not be where it is without their thoughtful leadership and expertise. Past curators include, most recently, Dr. Timothy J. Standring, our longstanding Gates Family Foundation Curator, Berger Collection Curator and department head from 1989 to 2020: his long and successful tenure is reflected in the numerous groundbreaking exhibitions, scholarly publications and acquisitions he spearheaded. Kathleen Stuart, our Berger Collection Curator from 2007 to 2019; Ann Daley, our American art curator and associate curator for the Petrie Institute of Western art from 1977 to 2001; Lauretta Dimmick, the first Gates Foundation Curator and curator of American art from 1990 to 1997; David Park Curry, curator of American art from 1983 to 1989; and (Claire) Cameron Wolfe, associate curator of European art from 1973 to 1984. The department is currently led by Angelica Daneo, chief curator and curator of European art before 1900.

Publications

Recent publications on European and American art includes:

Angelica Daneo, Christoph Heinrich, Michael Philipp and Ortrud Westheider, eds., Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exhibition catalog, Prestel Publishing, 2019.

Timothy J. Standring and Jaco Rutgers, Rembrandt As Printmaker, exhibition catalog, Yale University Press, 2018.

Angelica Daneo and Giovanna Damiani, Glory of Venice: Masterworks of the Renaissance, exhibition catalog, Denver Art Museum, 2015.

Timothy J. Standring, Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio, exhibition catalog, Yale University Press, 2015.

Christoph Heinrich, Nature as Muse, Inventing Impressionist Landscape, Denver Art Museum, 2014.

Timothy J. Standring, Daniel Sprick’s Fictions, exhibition catalog, University of New Mexico Press, 2014.

Kathleen Stuart, Treasures of British Art 1400—2000: The Berger Collection, exhibition catalog, Denver Art Museum, 2014

Angelica Daneo, Companion to European Painting before 1800, Denver Art Museum, 2013.

Timothy J. Standring and Martin Clayton, Castiglione: Lost Genius, exhibition catalog, University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Kathleen Stuart, Master Drawings: The Collection of Esmond Bradley Martin, Denver Art Museum, 2013.

Timothy J. Standring and Louis van Tilborgh, eds., Becoming Van Gogh, exhibition catalog, Yale University Press, 2012.

Angelica Daneo, The Kress Collection at the Denver Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, 2011.

Lush green painting of the English countryside

Edward Lear (English, 1812–1888), Nuneham, 1860. Oil paint on canvas. Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2018.22.

The Berger Collection

The Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum comprises 65 British artworks gifted to the museum in 2018 by the Berger Collection Educational Trust (BCET), owner of the collection since 1999. More than 60 of these paintings are currently on view in Treasures of British Art: The Berger Collection.

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Two figures sitting on a bench in a lush green garden

Berthe Morisot, The Lesson in the Garden (La leçon dans le jardin), 1886. Oil paint on canvas; 23 9/16 x 28 ¾ in. Collection of Frederic C. Hamilton, bequeathed to the Denver Art Museum.

The Frederic C Hamilton Collection

In January 2014, Denver-based philanthropist Frederic C. Hamilton (1927–2016), the museum's chairman emeritus, bequeathed 22 Impressionist masterworks from his private collection to the museum. This capstone gift marked 35 years of Fred Hamilton’s generous giving to the Denver Art Museum.

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Membership at the Denver Art Museum not only provides you discounts and access, but also the satisfaction of knowing your support helps us preserve and share art with present and future generations. Become a member today and see just how much the museum has to offer!

Are you interested in a specific type of art, while also enjoying opportunities to participate across the museum? If so, consider deepening your support by adding Museum Friends to your membership. Museum Friends enjoy access to free lectures, a deeper dive into a department of interest, and invitations to social gatherings for that department of interest.

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Lit up hallway of the newly renovated Martin Building

The Martin Building Project

The gallery for this collection is housed inside the newly renovated Martin Building. Standing seven stories tall, the Martin Building is home to collection galleries, a conservation laboratory, interactive classroom space, a family activity center, two restaurants, and the brand new Anna and John J. Sie Welcome Center. It reopened to the public on October 24, 2021.

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