In the late 19th century, American artists by the hundreds—including such luminaries as James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer—were irresistibly drawn to Paris, the world’s new art capital. By studying with leading masters and showing their work in Paris, these artists aimed to attract patronage from American collectors who had begun to buy contemporary French art in earnest soon after the end of the American Civil War. Paris inspired decisive changes in American painters’ styles and subjects, and stimulated the creation of more sophisticated art schools and higher professional standards back in the United States.

This landmark book features some 100 oil paintings by 37 Americans whose accomplishments proclaim the truth of what Henry James observed in 1887: "It sounds like a paradox, but it is a very simple truth, that when to-day we look for ‘American art’ we find it mainly in Paris. When we find it out of Paris, we at least find a great deal of Paris in it." Representing the breadth of artistic activity in Paris, the book includes painters who were aligned with vanguard tendencies—particularly what came to be known as Impressionism—as well as those who espoused the academic principles that many American patrons preferred.