Written by John A. Corry

Sep. 24, 2014: Three years ago, I visited New Haven to view the Yale Center for British Art and its collection of fine British paintings, the largest outside the United Kingdom.

Earlier this year a good friend urged me to return to New Haven, this time to see the collection, especially the American paintings, across the street in the Yale University Art Gallery, whose recent renovation had expanded its size by two thirds.

Accordingly, one Sunday last month three of us took the easy drive up the Merritt Parkway to find out what we had been missing. We were not disappointed; Yale has a first-rate collection, particularly of American paintings.

The museum began its life in 1831, when it acquired a series of Revolutionary War paintings by Connecticut artist John Trumbull. Larger copies of four of them, the Declaration of Independence, the Surrender of General Burgoyne, the Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and the Resignation of General Washington, hang in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Hung here in the Yale Gallery together with his paintings of the battles of Bunker Hill, Quebec, Trenton, and Princeton, they were a thrilling sight, especially to a history buff like me.

Near these paintings is a Trumbull painting of Washington standing by his horse at the Battle of Trenton. When the Charleston city fathers who had commissioned it rejected it because it was not "matter of fact enough," he sent them another, which I saw in Charleston last February. With the city spires in the background and the horse's rump prominently displayed, it is known as "Trumbull's Revenge."

The gallery is a mecca for devotees of nineteenth-century American landscapes. Perhaps the largest is Albert Bierstadt's depiction of Yosemite and its Glacier Point Trail. The other end of the country is represented by Frederic Church's view across a small lake of northern Maine's Mt. Katahdin.

Yale's collection also boasts another Bierstadt and two lovely Church volcano paintings of Ecuador's Cotopaxi and Chimborazo. There is a tranquil Fitz Henry Lane view of a Maine inlet where a large schooner lies beneath a lighthouse and two Martin Johnson Heade pictures of Massachusetts coastal meadows. Other works include landscapes by Sanford Robinson Gifford, Eastman Johnson, and John Frederick Kensett.

We also viewed three Civil War-era paintings by Winslow Homer: the nostalgic Old Mill depicts four homespun-clad women walking to work after being summoned by a bell on the mill's rooftop; In Front of Yorktown shows three Union soldiers quietly sitting in the woods by a campfire; and the third shows two women engaged in an informal game of croquet, which was becoming widely popular among women, who realized that it was one sport in which they could compete with men. Also displayed are a landscape, a portrait of a lady, and a still life, all by Sargent.

The American collection also boasts nine paintings by late nineteenth-century artist Thomas Eakins. Two are portraits of young women, one his fiancée; two others of men rowing on the nearby Schuylkill River; and another of men shooting in the river's marshes. Also displayed is a dark, haunting Eakins portrait of a Civil War Medal of Honor veteran. (This work, together with three others by Eakins and two by Homer, had been bequeathed to Yale by alumnus Stephen Clark, whose brother's gallery in Williamstown I visited earlier last month.)

Equally striking is Eakins's full-length portrait of an eminent professor and surgeon instructing his class on an operation he is about to perform. (The same picture is the focal point of a larger work, The Agnew Clinic, which shows the class viewing the patient on the operating table. That painting, owned by the University of Pennsylvania, was preceded by Eakins's The Gross Clinic, which the university several years ago tried to sell to two non-Philadelphia museums. The public outrage that it might leave the city led, instead, to its purchase by two local institutions.)

We spent so long in these galleries that we had little time to spend with more modern paintings, but I noted three fine Edward Hopper works (also Stephen Clark bequests) hanging on one wall. In another gallery we saw Van Gogh's The Night Café and three lovely Monets.

The museum also displays five works by Degas, three Cézannes, and paintings by Manet, Renoir, Seurat, and Pissarro. There are works by earlier artists, including Titian, Ghirlandaio, Van Dyck, Rubens, and Holbein, and a double portrait of a husband and wife by Hals, a gift more than a century ago of early Renaissance art forms that make up the core of a collection that led New York Times critic Holland Cotter to praise it as "one of the finest ensembles of 13th- and 14th-century Italian painting in any museum, anywhere."

For those interested in other areas, there is much more to explore: modern and contemporary art and rooms of antiquities and pre-Columbian, African, and Indo-Pacific items. And it is all just an hour-and-a-half drive from Bronxville.

Aug. 20, 2014: Less than three hours from Bronxville is a beautifully expanded museum whose bucolic surroundings complement its lovely landscapes and other fine paintings.

In the late 1940s, Singer Sewing Machine heir Sterling Clark was determining how to dispose of his large art collection. His concern that it might be destroyed in a nuclear war led him to forsake his native Manhattan in favor of a more isolated setting. Persuaded by Williams College President Baxter and influenced by the fact that his grandfather and father had been college trustees, he chose Williamstown in the Berkshires of northwestern Massachusetts.

In 1955, a year before Clark's death, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute opened its doors to the public. On trips to visit our daughter at Middlebury, Emily and I would break our journeys to enjoy its collections of Impressionists (more than 20 Renoirs), Winslow Homers, and other paintings.

As the years passed, through purchases and bequests, the Clark expanded its collections. By 2000, it became clear that it needed to make major renovations. The next year, the trustees adopted a master plan that would substantially reconfigure the Clark's 140-acre campus.

Carried out in two phases, it involved a new visitors center with rooms for special exhibitions and a substantial renovation of the original museum building that added more than 2,200 square feet of gallery space. Also included is the expansion of a building added in 1973, it will reopen next year as the Manton Center and will house a collection of more than 200 English paintings, drawings, and prints, including many works by Constable and Turner, that was donated to the Clark in 2007.

The new complex's architects moved the museum's entrance, previously facing South Street, to its other end so that visitors approach it against an open background of green lawns, meadows, and wooded slopes. Thus, when the Clark reopened last month after being closed for three years, there was special acclaim for its setting. The Architectural Record called it "breathtaking" and a "seamless integration of indoor and outdoor space." The full page New York Times review carried the headline "A Place of Serene Excitement, Inside and Out."

Earlier this month, two friends and I drove to Williamstown. After lunch at the nearby Williams Inn and purchasing our tickets at the new visitors center, we walked the several-hundred-foot-long glass-enclosed passageway to the museum building.

Our first stop was a large gallery containing the Clark's large collection of paintings by Winslow Homer and a number of lovely landscapes by 19th-century American artist George Inness, most of which were given to the Clark only last year. (Another gallery shows paintings by Sargent and other late 19th-century artists).

We next visited the largest gallery, which displays the majority of the Clark's many Renoirs and eight Monets, including one of his series of Rheims Cathedral. The effect of seeing them all together in one room is, itself, impressive. Other paintings by Renoir, as well as by Pissarro and Manet, are in an adjoining gallery. Elsewhere are several works by Degas, including a statue of a young ballet dancer, and a charming pastel by Cassatt.

The Clark Museum owns a small but especially lovely group of paintings by Renaissance masters including Piero della Francesca, Ghirlandaio, and Perugino. Others of its twenty galleries contain works by such artists as Corot, Gainsborough, Gauguin, and Goya. Scattered among the rooms are pieces of sculpture, as well as items of porcelain, glassware, and silver.

The total effect of experiencing the new Clark is overwhelming. I do have one complaint: it appears that nowhere in the museum building is a spot to sit and enjoy a soft drink, coffee, or tea, or to get a cup of ice water. The closest location is on the lower level of the visitors center, and this small café will only be open from July 1 to October 13.

The problem will worsen next year after the opening of the Manton Center with its many English pictures and gallery space to show them. Since the Manton will be reachable via a bridge from museum gallery 18, providing a refreshment station there would ameliorate the problem. Otherwise visitors, many of whom appeared to be elderly, who would like to take a short break will continue to be forced to trek to and from the visitors center in order to spend a relaxed two or three hours enjoying the Clark's many treasures.

For art lovers who have more time, the Berkshires boast other treasures, including Edith Wharton's Lenox home, The Mount, Stockbridge's Norman Rockwell Museum, and the home and studio of Lincoln sculptor Daniel Chester French. But visiting the Clark alone is well worth the trip.

Pictured here: John A. Corry

Photo by N. Bower