American Works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, pt 1

Deer's Skull with Pedernal, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1936; the artist was not originally from the Southwest, but was actually born on a Wisconsin dairy farm; she'd go on to live in Chicago, New York City, NY’s Lake George, Charlottesville VA and Amarillo TX

Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl, Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1893; Tiffany created this window specifically for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago claiming that it 'illustrates most perfectly the possibilities of American glass'

A Moment's Rest, Charles Sprague Pearce, c. 1885; this Bostonian moved to France to study art and received medals at the Paris Salon (he's known for his paintings of French peasants) and was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor

Violet Fishing, John Singer Sargent, 1889; inspired by Monet's compositions of women silhouetted against sky and water, Sargent wrote to Monet saying that he was going to paint his sister next to a pond with clouds reflected in it

The Yellow Room, Frederick Carl Frieseke, c. 1910; first trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and after working with James McNeill Whistler, the artist lived next door to Claude Monet in Giverny for several summers absorbing the master's style

Eleanor, Frank Weston Benton, 1907; American Impressionism typically featured tight brushwork around people (such as seen with Eleanor) but loose strokes in the landscape behind with a specific focus on the effects of light

Mrs. Duffee Sitting on a Striped Sofa, Reading, Mary Cassatt, 1876; in her days before joining the Impressionist movement, Cassatt struggled to get her pieces accepted at the Paris salons because her approach was deemed too modern

At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight), Childe Hassam, 1885-86; this Boston native was instrumental in promoting Impressionism to American audiences; his unusual first name was an old family name and is pronounced like child

Piz Bernina, Albert Bierstadt, c. 1880-90; this peak is the highest mountain in the Eastern Alps, located near St. Moritz on the Swiss/Italian border; Bernie, Bobby Ibarra and I skied there way back in 1990

Ready for the Ride, William Merritt Chase, 1877; Chase painted this work in Munich and sent it home for display in New York with a liberal organization that favored artists trained in Europe; it received critical acclaim giving Chase's career renown

The Dean's Roll Call, Thomas Eakins, 1899; commissioned by Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College to honor a long-serving dean, the college rejected the portrait which the dean's family bought and owned for decades

Helen Sears, John Singer Sargent, 1895; Helen was the daughter of a Bostonian and the museum does an outstanding job of highlighting local connections to the works in its collection

Morning on the Loing at Moret, William Lamb Picknell, c. 1895; the artist grew up in Massachusetts but for most of the 1890s lived at the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau in the town of Moret-sur-Loing with this being one of his most famous works

John, 1st Baron Byron, Kehinde Wiley, 2013; Wiley opened a studio in Beijing in 2006 to use helpers to do brushstrokes for his works; critics have long wondered about the extent to which his paintings are painted by Wiley himself

Boys in a Pasture, Winslow Homer, 1874; in this nostalgic painting, note how the boy's faces are averted, a device Homer often used to make his figures less individual and, therefore, more universal

Brig 'Antelope' in Boston Harbor, Fitz Henry Lane, 1863; this exceptionally fast ship, built in East Boston, was designed to smuggle Turkish opium into China, and return to the US with tea, silk and other Chinese luxuries

Center Table, Ralph Turnbull, c. 1846-51; the extraordinary geometric and pictorial inlays on this table bring together rare woods unique to Jamaica with imagery that speaks to Britain's colonial control of the island

Orchids and Hummingbird, Martin Johnson Heade, c. 1875-83; from his Latin American travels, Heade created more than 100 paintings of hummingbirds in scenes that hover between scientific illustration, landscape and still life

The Fog Warning, Winslow Homer, 1885; after catching two large halibut this fisherman in the Grand Banks sees an approaching fog bank and has to decide whether to ditch his fish (they are weighing down his vessel) to speed his return to his mother ship

This parlor is from the country estate of Nathaniel West which was built around 1800; after MA passed new laws in the early 1800s, West's wife divorced him because of his affairs and was granted ownership of Oak Hill; it was a novelty for women of that time to be granted possession of property in a divorce settlement