In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States knew an unprecedented economic development and industrialisation. However, painters of this period seemed to favour the representations of leisure. Responding to the patrons’ demands, they depicted a “gilded age” of American society devoted to perpetual entertainment. Images of women sewing peacefully and children playing in everlasting flowered gardens, reflected a taste for the so-called “genre painting”. This new iconography was directly linked to the growth of an upper middle-class, to which artists belonged or identified themselves.

About sixty paintings, drawings and prints from the Terra Foundation for American Art collection will introduce the visitor to one of the greatest invention of the modern era: leisure.

Discussion