Important 19th century European paintings and sculptures in the Cummer’s collection encompass a variety of movements and styles. Portraits represent the core of the Museum’s Neo-Classical holdings. They are Henry Raeburn’s Lady Harriet Don with Her Son (c. 1800), Benjamin West’s The Honorable Mrs. Shute Barrington (1808) and Portrait of Princess Pauline Borghèse and the Baroness de Mathisse (c. 1810) by René-Théodore Berthon.
Academic concerns are revealed through three major works by William Bouguereau including Return from the Harvest (1878), and Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Anacreon with Bacchus and Amor (c. 1893).
Developments in European landscape painting are chronicled through a large number of significant works, including Thomas Gainsborough’s Evening Landscape (1786), Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s Stream Beneath the Trees (mid-19th century), Paul Guigou’s Mouth of the Lourmarin River (1867), and Henri-Joseph Harpignies’ Landscape (1893). French Barbizon, Realist, and Impressionist works including the Guigou, Edgar Degas’ Scene with Ballerinas (c. 1890), and Camille Pissarro’s The Gleaners (c. 1889) put American Impressionist works in context.