Idle Hours

Julian Alden Weir

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Depicted here are the artist’s wife, Anna, and their first child, Caroline Alden Weir, born in 1884, seated in a large, sunny room just off the dining room and pantry of their home. The restrained palette, realistic treatment of the figures, and carefully arranged composition continue the painting style Weir had developed during the 1880s under the influence of such French artists as Jules Bastien-Lepage and Édouard Manet. However, its informal, leisure-time subject and its emphasis on light effects—especially in the bright glow filtering through the curtains and the resulting shadowed faces—look ahead to his adoption of Impressionism during the 1890s.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art