“The Evolution of Light and Color: American and European Realism to Post-Impressionism” will open at the Wiscasset Bay Gallery on Thursday, July 31. The opening evening of the exhibition will coincide with the July Wiscasset Village Art Walk when the village comes alive with musical performances, street vendors and gallery openings from 4-7 p.m.

Exploring and contrasting American and European art movements from the 1850s to 1950s, the show features works by American realist Johann Hermann Carmiencke (1810-1867) of the Hudson River highlands and French realist and Barbizon School painter Jules Louis Dupré (1811-1889). These artists worked in a highly detailed style, paying close attention to the natural world. Their use of light to describe the landscape and waterways was often tonalist and luminist.

At the height of the Belle Epoque, French impressionist Victor Gilbert (1847-1933) captured Parisian life in 1890 at the Place de la Madeleine and the Rue Royale. Gentlemen dressed in their finery stroll along the avenue passing elegant women in their feathered hats. Horses pull carriages loaded with passengers against the backdrop of Greek revival columns of L’église de La Madeleine. French Impressionism is on full display in Gilbert’s “Rue Royal” from the vivid broken colors of reds, yellows and greens to the soft purple shadows cast by the trees and flower seller’s cart.

Some American artists, like Monhegan Islander Andrew Winter (1892-1958), initially employed a looser brushwork to depict village life and the coastline of the island. By the middle of the 20th century, Winter’s style became more realistic in nature when he painted the iconic St. George lighthouse, Marshall Point Light. The light tower is seen majestically rising up from the rocky ledges, stark white against a rich blue sky and deep green tree line. Fellow Monhegan artists whose works are included in the exhibition are Alice Kent Stoddard (1883-1976), with scenes of fishermen cleaning fish or lobstermen heading out of the harbor; Abraham Bogdanove (1888-1946); James Fitzgerald (1899-1971); Jay Hall Connaway (1893-1970); Sears Gallagher (1869-1955); and Eric Hudson (1854-1932).

Among the Post-Impressionist works on display is a fauvist view of a barge along a river by Antonietta Raphaël (1895-1975) and several works on paper by Andre Derain (1880-1954). Etchings and lithographs by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), George Rouault (1871-1958) and Pierre Renoir (1841-1919) are also featured.

“The Evolution of Light and Color” will be on display at the Wiscasset Bay Gallery through Aug. 27. For more information, call 882-7682 or visit the gallery’s website at wiscassetbaygallery.com. The Wiscasset Bay Gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday and is located at 75 Main St. (Route 1) in historic Wiscasset Village.