they chose the prominent Mr. Chase to be the first teacher. The Museum's collection features paintings from all periods of his work, including the early Still Life with Fruit (1871); works from the famous New York park scenes series, notably Park in Brooklyn (ca. 1887); major studio paintings from the 1880s, such as The Blue Kimono (ca. 1888); and of course, the paintings made during those summers in the Shinnecock Hills, including The Bayberry Bush (ca. 1895). Fairfield Porter Fairfield Porter was one of the most important American realist painters from 1949 until his death in 1975. Not coincidentally, these were the years when Porter lived in Southampton, New York, and in 1979 his estate recognized the bond between the artist and the Museum by donating some 250 works to the Parrish collection. Porter was both a gifted painter and an accomplished writer who produced some of the most lucid art criticism and commentary of the time, notably his reviews for the magazine Art News. He insisted that he painted what he saw rather than what he might assume to be there. Porter painted what he was familiar with—his family and friends and the places he lived and visited, including Southampton, New York and a family-owned island off the coast of Maine where he had summered since childhood. Writing about the intimate interior paintings of the French artists Vuillard and Bonnard, Porter found that in their work that recorded the ordinary "…the extraordinary is everywhere." An artist who steadfastly maintained a figurative vision, he knew and admired many Abstract Expressionist artists on the East End, especially Willem de Kooning. Porter once wrote: "The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is, and the abstract artist what art is, but it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality." Other collections While the Chase and Porter collections are cornerstones of the Museum's holdings, the permanent collection is wide-ranging. In 1958, Alfred Corning Clark donated to the Parrish more than two dozen paintings and watercolors, among them works by Ralph Blakelock, James A. M. Whistler, William Glackens, and Arthur B. Davies. Works by William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Ernest Lawson, and Charles Burchfield were given to the Museum by Clark a year later. In 1961, in addition to artists mentioned previously, Mrs. Littlejohn bequeathed to the Parrish works by