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 For cultured and wealthy Americans, Europe had always held a special attraction. After the Civil War, as fortunes grew and steamships made travel faster, more Americans went there. Many American artists and collectors, affecting European tastes, avoided American subjects in favor of European art.
 While American artists studied in London, Paris, Düsseldorf and Munich, it was Italy, the cradle of Western art and architecture, that was their favorite destination. American sculptors especially settled in Florence and Rome, where they had access to marble, skilled craftsmen to make copies of their sculpture and American tourists to buy them.
While the sculptors adopted the classical style of ancient Greece and Rome, the painters preferred to portray ancient ruins in pastoral settings. Such pictures suggested both the grandeur and decadence of Europe.
Images (top to bottom):
George Peter Alexander Healy, Frederick E. Church, Jervis McEntee, Arch of Titus, 1871, Oil on canvas, Bequest of Dr. J. Ackerman Coles, 1926 26.1260
Thomas Cole, The Arch of Nero, 1846, Oil on canvas, Purchase 1957 Sophronia Anderson Bequest Fund 57.24
Thomas Worthington Whittredge, The Wetterhorn, 1858, Oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Katzenbach, 1965 65.143
In 1873, Mark Twain coined the phrase "Gilded Age" to describe a period characterized by rampant industrialization, speculation, greed and political corruption. The fortunes amassed by such industrialists as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Frick and the Vanderbilt brothers co-existed with the desperate poverty of immigrants and rural migrants who crowded into cities.
The 1876 Centennial sparked an interest in the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, which many perceived as morally superior to the emerging polyglot nation.
Collectors of American art wanted works that were nostalgic, escapist and spiritual. Four popular themes reflect these yearnings for simpler times: still-lifes of old, non-industrial objects; religious works; scenes of Colonial America; and misty, moody, Tonalist landscapes.
 Images (top to bottom):
George Inness, The Trout Brook, 1891, Oil on canvas, Purchase 1965 The Members' Fund 65.36
Daniel Chester French, The Concord Minute Man of 1775, 1889-90, Bronze, Bequest of Miss Annie W. Colby 1960 60.588
John Peto, Still Life with Lard Oil Lamp, ca. 1900, Oil on canvas, Bequest of Dr. Donald M. Dougall, 1954 54.196
 The lives of American women were changing in the late 19th century. Women continued to take care of homes and families, but young women went to work in factories and new offices, as well as in the traditional field of domestic service. Some middle-class women gained access to higher education and entered the professions of nursing and school teaching.
Women reformers established settlement houses and campaigned for temperance, child labor laws, better schools and suffrage. Women also engaged in active recreation, from tennis to bicycling. The term "New Woman" was coined to capture the energy and public visibility of women in all these arenas at the turn of the century.
 Painters portrayed women in ways that reflected society's changing and conflicting feelings about how women should lead their lives. Motherhood, domesticity, fashion and beauty were celebrated, but so were independence and freedom. Perhaps the greatest symbol of the New Woman was the Gibson Girl, created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson.
Images (top to bottom):
John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Mrs. Charles Thursby, 1897-98, Oil on canvas, Purchase by exchange 1985, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan Pitney, Emilie Coles from the J. Ackerman Coles Collection, Mrs. Lewis B. Ballantyne and the Bequest of Louis Bamberger 85.45
Winslow Homer, Beaver Mountain, ca. 1876, Oil on canvas, Purchase 1955 Louis Bamberger Bequest Fund 55.118
Mary Cassatt, Jenny Cassatt with her son, Gardner, ca. 1882,Oil on canvas, Purchase 1931 Felix Fuld Bequest Fund 31.221
Banner Image: Albert Bierstadt, Western Landscape, 1869, Oil on canvas, Purchase 1961 The Members' Fund, 61.516
All works shown here are from the Collection of The Newark Museum.
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