Editing Metropolitan Museum of Art (section)

====Plein Air, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist Painting====
The Met's plein air painting collection, which it calls "unrivaled",<ref name="Metmuseum.org-1" /> was the last large section of the European Paintings collection to have a home at the museum. The sale of a Monet and the construction of small scale galleries ultimately resulted in the acquisition of 220 European paintings (most of them plein-air sketches) from two collections. The Monet was used to purchase a half share of Wheelock "Lock" Whitney III's collection in 2003 (the remainder came as a promised gift), and when Eugene V. Thaw (1927–2018) saw how good they looked in the Met's new, purpose built galleries, he and his wife Clare donated their substantially larger collection to the Met (much of it a joint gift to the Morgan Library). The Met easily has the best collection of this material in the nation, and one of the three or four best in the world.<ref name="Cordova-2021" /> Thus the Met's collection, hitherto top-heavy with famous French artists, "became uniquely diverse," with "many little-known artists from France, as well as numerous artists from other European nations;" many of which are not otherwise represented in U.S. museums.<ref name="Cordova-2021" /> The plein-air collection forms a bridge "to what became the avant-garde," the Impressionists and their successors.<ref name="Cordova-2021" />

As noted by the museum, "a work by Renoir entered the Museum as early as 1907 (today the Museum has become one of the world's great repositories of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art)."<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Brief History of the Museum – The Metropolitan Museum of Art |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/press/general-information/2005/a-brief-history-of-the-museum |access-date=2023-11-29 |website=www.metmuseum.org|date=September 21, 2005 }}</ref> The museum terms its nineteenth-century French paintings "second only to the museums of Paris," with strengths in "Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and others."<ref name="Metmuseum.org-1" />

The foundation of the museum's great Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection was laid by the Louisine (1855-1929) and Henry Osborne Havemeyer (1847-1907) collection. The most important portion of their immense collection came to the museum after the death of Louisine in 1929.<ref name="Mayor-1957" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection – MetPublications – The Metropolitan Museum of Art |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Splendid_Legacy_The_Havemeyer_Collection |access-date=2023-11-29 |website=www.metmuseum.org |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Exhibition The Havemeyer Collection When America Discovered Impressionism... {{!}} Musée d'Orsay |url=http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/whats-on/exhibitions/havemeyer-collection-when-america-discovered-impressionism |access-date=2023-11-29 |website=www.musee-orsay.fr |language=en}}</ref> It was particularly strong in works by Courbet, Corot, Manet, Monet, and, above all, Degas. The other remarkable gift of this material came from Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, who, before they promised their collection to the Met in 1991, annually loaned it to the Met for half a year at a time.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Annenberg Collection of Impressionist and Postimpressionist Masterpieces |url=https://www3.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2001/annenberg-collection |access-date=2023-11-29 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism – MetPublications – The Metropolitan Museum of Art |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/The_Annenberg_Collection_Masterpieces_of_Impressionism_and_Post_Impressionism |access-date=2023-11-29 |website=www.metmuseum.org |language=en}}</ref> Walter Annenberg described his choice of gifting his collection to the Met as an example of "strength going to strength."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Kimmelman |first=Michael |date=June 2, 1991 |title=From Strength to Strength: A Collector's Gift to the Met |work=New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/02/arts/art-view-from-strength-to-strength-a-collector-s-gift-to-the-met.html}}</ref> The two collections are highly complementary: "The Annenberg collection serves as a second, complementary core collection of blue chip Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. Most importantly, it strengthened the Met's relatively sparse holdings of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, it added needed late works by Cézanne and Monet as well as a rare Seurat, and it brought a very impressive group of Van Goghs to a collection already rich in works by the Dutchman."<ref name="Cordova-2021" />