19th Century Art September 1, 2008

The Milwaukee Art Museum's collection of 19th century European painting and sculpture contains outstanding examples from almost every period and movement. The nucleus of the collection was created with the establishment of the Layton Art Gallery in 1888. Included in Layton's original gift are such favorites as Bouguereau's 'Homer and His Guide' and Bastien-Lepage's 'The Wood Gatherer.' The English-born Layton wished to give the public a representative range of contemporary European and American art, avoiding what he viewed as the more extravagant and controversial examples of Impressionism. To broaden the focus of the original collection, important works by Gustave Courbet and Impressionists Claude Monet, Gustave Caillebotte and the sculptor Auguste Rodin were added to the Collection in the late 1950s and 1960s. The 2001 donation of a seminal early landscape by Pierre-Auguste Renoir further expands the scope and importance of the museum's Impressionist holdings.