RICHMOND, VA.- Capturing Beauty: American Impressionist and Realist Paintings from the McGlothlin Collection, opening Thursday, May 19, 2005, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will showcase works from one of the largest holdings of 19th- and 20th-century American paintings still in private hands, according to VMFA Director Dr. Michael Brand.

Mr. and Mrs. James W. McGlothlin of Austin, Texas, assembled their collection over the past decade. Mrs. McGlothlin has been a VMFA trustee since 1998. Among the 35 paintings, watercolors, pastels and sculptures in the exhibition will be works by some of the nation's leading artists. "Breath-taking Impressionist works by Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent join forces with powerful Realist pictures by George Bellows, Winslow Homer and Robert Henri," Dr. Brand says.

One of the most important paintings on view will be Martin Johnson Heade's Two Magnolias and a Bud on Teal Velvet (1885-95). It is from the well-known series of magnolia studies created by Heade in an era when his Victorian audience was versed in the "language" of flowers. Magnolia grandiflora symbolized feminine charm, self-esteem and — a connotation still popular in the South — hospitality. A similar Heade painting, Giant Magnolias on Blue Velvet (circa 1890), now in the National Gallery of Art collection, is featured on a U.S. first-class postage stamp.

Dr. David Park Curry, VMFA's curator of American arts, says "unexpected gems — a seductive sketch by William Merritt Chase, a subtle seascape by James McNeill Whistler, an evocative interior by William McGregor Paxton — will add luster to the show."

"A sparkling watercolor by Maurice Prendergast radiates the energy with which Mr. and Mrs. McGlothlin have exercised their passion for collecting since the mid-1990s," Dr. Brand says.

"Their recently acquired Sargent oil portrait of Mme. Eugenia Errazuriz, one of the great beauties of the late 19th century, attests to their own love of the beautiful in American art. Now to be shared for the first time with visitors to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the American Impressionist and Realist pictures in the exhibition will invite repeated discovery."

Two-thirds of the pictures to be on view were painted in the United States. Expatriate Americans working in England, France, Italy and Spain created the rest.

A fully illustrated 88-page exhibition catalog will include 34 entries by Curry and an introduction by Dr. Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., Curator of American Art, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. The exhibition catalog is made possible by the Julia Louise Reynolds Fund. The exhibition catalog is being distributed by the University of Virginia Press.