'American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915' brings together the appealing works of two generations of American painters and presents them from a fresh point of view. The American Impressionists and Realists have been categorized as separate or even opposing groups, but, in fact, they shared significant experiences and goals―notably Parisian training, an enthusiasm for modern French painting, and a desire to translate these sources into a peculiarly American idiom. …

The Metropolitan Museum began acquiring American drawings and watercolors in 1880, just ten years after its founding. Since then it has amassed more than 1,500 works executed by American artists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in watercolor, pastel, chalk, ink, graphite, gouache, and charcoal. Roughly a third of the collection is by John Singer Sargent and was published as a single volume in 2000. …

This catalogue tries to record and thus to preserve an aspect of life and culture in New York that is fast vanishing. Most great works of art are now in educational institutions, but those still in private collections, when assembled with love and understanding and arranged in harmonious surroundings, take on a living quality and an intimate appeal that they lose in a museum. …