Summer Light: American Impressionist Paintings from the Thomas Clark Collection

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May 8 - August 29, 2021

Permanent Collection

As the days grow longer and the weather warmer, the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State welcomes summer with the first presentation of American Impressionist paintings from a major forthcoming gift. Featuring more than twenty-five works, this exhibition explores the durability and dissemination of Impressionism in the United States between about 1910 and 1940. The season’s associations with vitality and leisure appealed to a range of artists who painted sun-streaked canvases in the open air. From Maine to Florida, from Texas to California, their bright palettes and broken brushwork rendered all facets of the American landscape and enjoyed popular acclaim. Whether depicting the bustle of harbors and beaches or the radiance of mountains and coastline, artists adapted, and promoted at summer art colonies, French Impressionist techniques to American sensibilities. Artists featured in the exhibition include Maurice Braun, Hayley Lever, George Loftus Noyes, Carl Peters, Jane Peterson, and Mabel May Woodward. The works are on loan from Thomas Clark, who intends to bequeath his collection of pre-1940 American Impressionist landscape paintings to the Palmer Museum.