‘American Impressionism: Treasures from the Daywood Collection’ opens at the MAC

Taking a hard turn from the digital world of Dreamworks and back toward the world of fine art, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture’s next exhibition will showcase a selection of 41 pieces of American impressionist art from the Daywood Collection at the Huntington Museum of Art.

Founded by Arthur Dayton and Ruth Woods-Dayton (who later combined their family names to create “Daywood”), the collection features paintings dated from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Stretching from the early to the later end of impressionism, the exhibit will include works by Robert Henri, Charles H. Davis, John Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Willard Metcalf and Gari Melchers, among others.

The exhibit, “American Impressionism: Treasures from the Daywood Collection,” opens today and continues through Jan. 8.

A transitional era in many ways, American artists around this time were beginning to leave behind the classical, academic styles, guidelines and subjects of their forebears in favor of the newer methods they would’ve been exposed to while studying abroad.

“Around the turn of the century, with World War I early on in the 1900s, we’ve had this modernization, industrialization – and a lot of the American artists were going to Europe to study,” said Kayla Tackett, the museum’s director of exhibitions and collections. She added that you quickly begin to see the influence of European impressionism on American artists.

“Looking at their techniques, what they are doing with thicker brushstrokes and these interesting juxtapositions of color, playing with color theory and light – that’s what you see reflected here as the Americans come back and then apply the same techniques to landscapes in America.”

The collection includes a variety of portraits, landscapes, house exteriors and seascapes from a variety of locations across the country. Moving through the exhibit, Tackett said, you’re not just seeing a beautiful collection of paintings. You’re witnessing an “exchange of ideas throughout the country and … throughout the world.”