Summer Woodlands

Julie Hart Beers

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Widowed with two young children, Beers began painting at the age of twenty-two in an effort to become financially independent through the sale of her landscapes. Sister of artists James and William Hart, she spent summers sketching in the Hudson Valley and throughout New England. While the precise location of this intimate study remains unknown, it was likely painted en plein air, as suggested by its small size and rapid brushwork. Although her brothers discouraged Beers from engaging in physically demanding outdoor work, she still took up the challenge, writing that she, "tramped on after them many a weary mile through mud and wet."

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