Fort Worth, TX, November 3, 2009—For a limited time, visitors to the Amon Carter Museum can see two American masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Artist’s Wife and His Setter Dog (1884–89) by Thomas Eakins and Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly (1880) by Mary Cassatt.

“Both are intimate portraits of the artists’ loved ones, although the artists approached their subjects quite differently,” says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture at the Amon Carter Museum. “Eakins depicts his wife and setter Harry with an uncompromising realism, while Cassatt portrays her ailing sister Lydia with the delicacy and directness of the Impressionists’ brushstroke.”

While these two paintings are in Fort Worth, the Carter has in return loaned two of its own masterpieces to the Met, Swimming (1895) by Thomas Eakins and Idle Hours (ca. 1894) by William Merritt Chase. Both paintings are in the Met’s exhibition American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915.

The Met's paintings are on view at the Amon Carter Museum through January 18, 2010.

And, the Amon Carter Museum is hosting a free gallery talk about these two loans on November 12 at 6 p.m. at the museum.