Childe Hassam’s The Fourth of July 1916 transforms Fifth Avenue into a vibrant sea of American flags, using Impressionist brushwork and patriotic color to celebrate national identity during the First World War era.
Fish and Waves by Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Fish and Waves lamp reflects his fascination with water, Eastern aesthetics, and luminous design, transforming glass and bronze into a flowing aquatic vision of color, movement, and light.
Hartwell Memorial Window by Tiffany
Agnes Northrop, leader of Tiffany’s female designers, “the Tiffany Girls,” crafted the luminous 1917 Hartwell Memorial Window — a masterpiece of light, color, and glass-painted landscapes.
Freedom From Want by Norman Rockwell
Rockwell’s joyful Freedom From Want — originally a wartime vision of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms — became America’s most beloved Thanksgiving image, raising $132 million in war bonds.
La Carmencita by John Singer Sargent
Sargent’s monumental La Carmencita — bold, magnetic, breathtakingly alive — immortalized Spain’s sensational dancer in swift brushstrokes so powerful, France purchased it within two years.
Smash the Hun
Hopper’s raw 1918 propaganda poster Smash the Hun — dismissed by its creator as “pretty awful” — unexpectedly launched his career, winning $300 and captivating thousands of Broadway passersby.
The Red School House by Winslow Homer
Homer’s luminous Red School House — a young teacher, mountain light, children learning — captured post-Civil War America’s tender optimism for simpler times and brighter futures.
The Parthenon by Frederic Edwin Church
Church’s Parthenon study captures Athenian light in radiant, shifting color, transforming Pentelic marble into a living presence—an intimate, luminous prelude to his grand vision of classical grandeur.
Rooms by the Sea
Hopper’s Rooms by the Sea transforms Cape Cod light into an image of solitude, where an interior opens abruptly to the vast, silent sea—echoing Romantic ideas of isolation, contemplation, and the presence of nature beyond human enclosure.
Poppies on the Isles of Shoals
Thaxter’s Appledore garden and Hassam’s paintings transform the Isles of Shoals into an Impressionist world of light and flowers, where nature, memory, and artistic community merge in luminous scenes of coastal beauty and cultivated bloom.