Artwork
The Daughter's Return

The Daughter's Return is an oil painting by the Impressionist artist Robert MacCameron. It dates from 1909 and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
The subject’s domestic context aligns with genre scenes of early 20th-century American life, emphasizing themes of reunion and continuity.
The work titled The Daughter's Return, painted by Robert MacCameron in 1909, portrays a man and a woman in an interior setting. The composition places the female figure centrally, suggesting a focus on familial connection, while the male figure stands nearby, possibly indicating a guardian or relative. The subject’s domestic context aligns with genre scenes of early 20th-century American life, emphasizing themes of reunion and continuity.
The painting’s narrative is reinforced by its title, which references the return of a daughter to her family home.
Technique & Style
The Daughter's Return is executed in oil on canvas, a traditional medium well suited to MacCameron's genre-painting practice. The support is a horizontal canvas measuring 100 cm in height by 139.7 cm in width, giving the composition a landscape-oriented format that accommodates the figural interaction between the depicted man and woman. As a genre scene, the work relies on painterly handling of oil paint to render the figures and their setting, with the choice of canvas providing a stable ground for layered tonal modeling.
The painting is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, classified within The American Wing.
History & Provenance
Robert MacCameron's 1909 oil painting The Daughter's Return is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The work is classified within the museum's American Wing. While the painting was created in 1909, the provided sources do not specify a unique inventory or accession number for the piece. The sources also contain no information regarding a specific exhibition history for this artwork.
Context
The Daughter's Return is an oil on canvas genre scene painted by Robert MacCameron in 1909. The work measures 100 cm by 139.7 cm and depicts a man and a woman. It is part of The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is catalogued as a genre scene from the early twentieth-century American painting tradition.
Its inclusion in the museum’s collection highlights the artist’s focus on narrative subjects and places the painting within the broader context of American genre painting that flourished around the turn of the century.
Overview
The Daughter's Return, painted by Robert MacCameron in 1909, is an oil on canvas genre scene. Housed within the American Wing, the work captures a quiet, intimate moment between a man and a woman. It exemplifies the artist's focus on everyday life, presenting a scene of domestic drama with subtle emotional depth.
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