as cowhands and guides of the western plains, modeled their work after real people and personal experiences. Their bucking broncos, cowboys, and portraits of Native Americans are romantic interpretations of a vanishing American west. European paintings The Shelburne Museum's collection of fine art includes objects originally in the collection of Henry O. Havemeyer and Louisine Elder Havemeyer, parents of Electra Havemeyer Webb who inherited the collection from them. The European painters still represented by the collection include Rembrandt van Rijn, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt. The Havemeyers were among the first American collectors of French Impressionist painting and amassed one of the most important collections of Old Masters and Impressionist paintings on American soil. The French artist Édouard Manet (1832–1883) felt strongly that keen observation made a great painter. A brilliant technician who used broad strokes of paint as comfortably as he did minute dabs of color, Manet explored ideas about light that set the stage for the Impressionist movement. He completed Blue Venice while touring Italy in 1874. His dashes of paint create the effect of sunlight sparkling on water; on the gondolier, Manet used multiple strokes of color to create a three-dimensional effect. Claude Monet (1840–1926), a prominent leader of the Impressionist movement, stressed the importance of working outdoors and letting art illustrate the color and movement of the natural environment. Five landscapes by Monet are included in the museum's collection. In the 1880s and 1890s Monet captured the changing effects of natural light by creating series of paintings of the same subject in different weather and light conditions. His Haystacks in the Snow is part of a series of over thirty paintings of haystacks. Pastels, soft, colorful chalks, were perfected by the French in the 19th century. Edgar Degas is considered one of the founders of Impressionism though he preferred to be considered a Realist. Degas's work differed from other Impressionists; while Monet concentrated on the effects of light and shadow, Degas focused on unusual perspectives and complex formal structures. The Shelburne Museum has seven Degas works in the collection, which can be seen in the Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building. Mary Cassatt, the one American Impressionist in the collection, had close ties to the Havemeyer and Webb families. Louisine Elder Havemeyer, Electra Havemeyer Webb's mother, was a close friend to Cassatt, who played a large role in shaping the Havemeyers' French Impressionist