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The Factory Village

Artist:
Julian Alden Weir (American, West Point, New York 1852–1919 New York)
Date:
1897
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
29 x 38 in. (73.7 x 96.6 cm)
Classification:
Paintings
Credit Line:
Gift of Cora Weir Burlingham, 1979, and Purchase, Marguerite and Frank Cosgrove Jr. Fund, 1998
Accession Number:
1979.487
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 770
Having studied with leading academic painters in Paris, Weir was repelled by French Impressionism in the 1870s. By the 1890s, however, under the influence of Childe Hassam, Theodore Robinson, and others, he had himself adopted the style. Here, he celebrated picturesque New England industry, offering symbols of progress in harmony with nature. A large tree spreads its protective canopy over two telegraph poles, in the extreme foreground, as well as over the smokestack and spool shop (with tower) of the Willimantic Linen Company’s Connecticut factory. In the tranquil scene, there is no hint of the company’s labor woes or financial problems.
Signature: [at lower left]: J. Alden Weir. 1897.
the artist's wife, Ella Baker Weir; her stepdaughter, Cora Weir Burlingham; Cora Weir Burlingham and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art and William Carlin and Charles Burlingham

Essays
American Impressionism
Americans in Paris, 1860–1900
Nineteenth–Century Classical Music

Timelines
The United States and Canada, 1800–1900 A.D.

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915
Masterpieces of American Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Notable Acquisitions, 1979–1980

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