"New England Impressionists Rediscovered" opens at renovated Fruitlands Museum

In Harvard, Mass., Fruitlands Museum has opened a rich exhibit of New England paintings, featuring 55 exquisite examples of impressionism by John Joseph Enneking, Frederick Childe Hassam, Daniel F. Santry, Oliver Chaffee, Helen Sawyer, and others.

"New England Impressionists Rediscovered" draws on loans from institutions and private collectors.

Organized by guest curators Samuel M. and Sheila W. Robbins with assistance from Curator of Collections Michael Volmar, the exhibition includes many works by expatriate Americans who studied in France in the late 19th century and became early adapters of impressionism.

Highlights include Enneking's "Portrait of Grace," Chaffee's "Provincetown Garden," Sidney M. Chase's "Monhegan Dawn" and William Closson's "Winter Thaw, Newton Upper Falls."

The exhibition is on view in the newly renovated Picture Gallery, which is home to over 100 Hudson River School paintings and a wealth of vernacular portraits. The museum complex also encompasses Transcendalist Bronson Alcott's farmhouse, a Native American gallery, a Shaker collection, among other offerings and buildings in a rural setting about 45 minutes west of Boston.