More Favorite American Artists is a new, stand-alone, five-week art history course.  This course is a continuation of Favorite American Artists, which was offered last spring. The 2021 course is not a prerequisite.

In this course, we will study the life and discuss the works of five American artists: Genre painter William Sidney Mount, American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry, American Impressionist Childe Hassam, African American Realist Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Ashcan School realist John Sloan.

We will explore Mount’s charming and intimate scenes of rustic daily life in his rural 19th century Long Island home. We will discover the underappreciated work of Perry, friend of Claude Monet, early advocate of French Impressionism in the United States, and painter of tender portraits and impressionist landscapes. We will delight in Hassam’s nostalgic and idealized urban scenes of late 19th and early 20th century Boston and New York. We will learn about Tanner, the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim, who, out of necessity, painted mostly biblical subjects, but who is best remembered for his moving portrayals of everyday life of black Americans.  We will analyze Sloan’s gritty, unidealized, unapologetic examination of early 20th century New York city life and his sympathetic depictions of working-class subjects.

I will augment slide lectures about each artist with many class discussions.  Before class each week, I will email links to brief online readings on background topics and attach handout summaries for each class.  Note that this class is scheduled for 1 ¾ hours rather than 1 ½ hours to allow for longer class discussions, when appropriate.

Preparation will take less than an hour each week.