The Weir Family, 1820-1920: Expanding the Traditions of American Art

Much recent scholarship in American art history and cultural studies examines cross-cultural exchanges in the shaping of American art and culture. This lavishly illustrated volume contributes to this endeavor by exploring, through seven scholarly essays and more than 150 color and back-and-white images, how the transatlantic encounters of three of America’s most notable nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists helped mold American art.

Robert Walter Weir (1803–1889) and his sons John Ferguson Weir (1841–1926) and Julian Alden Weir (1852–1919) saw themselves as heirs to European art traditions and repeatedly crossed the Atlantic to connect with their artistic heritage. Yet they lived, painted, and taught in New York and New England, where they were leaders in American art. Robert taught art at West Point, John founded the first academic art program on a U.S. college campus at Yale, and Julian was a major American impressionist. Their combined works provide a compendium of the painting genres produced in Europe and America across an entire century.

Through letters, diaries, histories, and paintings, this book examines the lives of the American men and women of the Weir art dynasty and their explorations of the wider world—from the Hudson River Valley to London, Paris, and Rome.