French Impressionism: From the Museum of Fine Arts Boston opens 4th June-3rd Oct 2021 at the National Gallery Victoria. The NGV will host 100+ works by Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne and Mary Cassatt, including 79 paintings never been seen here before.
The exhibition will chart the course of the late-C19th art movement, highlighting the key milestones and figures at the centre of their era of experimentation. This 2021 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Exhibition will evoke the energy and intellectual dynamism of the period. And it will emphasise the thinking of the artists themselves, revealing the social connections, artistic influences and personal relationships that united these radicals.
Boston’s MFA is an institution well known for its collection of French Impressionist paintings. The collection benefited from the collecting efforts of individual Bostonians, some of whom visited the artists in France back then. Mary Cassatt, the American-born artist integral to the French Impressionist movement, advocated among her fellow Americans for their patronage of her French colleagues. This ensured that many great Impressionist paintings found their way into important American collections. Thank you Boston!
Presented thematically in 10 sections, the exhibition will open with early works by Impressionism’s forebears, Eugène Boudin and painters of the Barbizon School, illustrating their intense influence on Monet’s use of painting outdoors en plein air, to capture changing conditions. The growth of the movement in later decades will be mapped via an exploration of the Impressionists’ favourite subjects and ideas. French Impressionism will amplify some of the key elements eg visible, distinctive strokes, vibrant colours and new perspectives.
For viewers not very familiar with impressionism, this will be a very welcome place of discovery. The word impression back in the late C19th was a rapid notation of an effect of weather, giving a quick look at the world around them. Their quick painting did not need to be taken home and polished up in the studio; it was something that had merit in and of itself. Visitors will delight in the beauty of these vividly coloured paintings, which still appeal 120+ years after they were created.
Visitors will experience the key elements of Impressionism, including distinctive brushwork, unique points of view, arresting use of colour, in places dear to the artists eg Paris, Argenteuil, Fontainebleau Forest, Giverny, the Normandy coast and Mediterranean coast. Still lifes, intimate interiors and outdoor street scenes by such artists as Manet, Renoir and Gustave Caillebotte will also feature.
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Grand Canal Venice, 1908, by Monet.
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The highlight will be a fine display of 16 canvases by Claude Monet, in an arrangement reminiscent of the distinctive, oval gallery designed for his famous 1920s garden series at the Musée de l’Orangerie Paris. The exhibition will contain both Renoir’s Dance at Bougival and Monet’s Water Lilies 1905. These art works are among the most iconic images of French Impressionism, epitomising what is most loved about the movement: radiant colour, iridescent light effects, impassioned response to the beauty of nature.
MFA Boston’s curator Katie Hanson’s personal favourite painting (but not mine) is Manet’s Street Singer (1862), a portrait of a woman in a grey dress walking out of a cafe, holding a guitar and cherries. She says it captures that modern, inscrutable mystery of glimpsing a compelling stranger on the street, highlighted by her hand covering her mouth. Does it remind the viewer of the current pandemic?
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Running concurrently with French Impressionism will be a companion show-case of Australian impressionists, called Titled She-Oak and Sunlight (April-Aug 2021). This show will feature 270+ works from local artists including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, Charles Conder, Clara Southern and Jane Sutherland, drawn from the NGV’s collection as well as the National Gallery of Australia, state galleries and private collections. She-Oak and Sunlight was named after a Tom Roberts painting. The works will explore the relationships and international influences behind Australia’s most recognisable and important art movement.
Highlights include McCubbin’s The Pioneer and Roberts’ well-known Shearing the Rams (1890) which depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed, and A Break Away! And see Clara Southern’s An Old Bee Farm Warrandyte c1900, a nostalgic vision of the landscape, painted in a soft palette of twilight tones. Following conservation treatment, visitors may be able to appreciate the newly restored colours of Arthur Streeton’s Hawkesbury River 1896 and in Purple Noon’s Transparent Might, 1896.
The exhibition will also display lesser-known paintings by Iso Rae, May Vale, Jane Price and Ina Gregory, plus more widely recognisable works by John Russell andE Phillips Fox. It charts the creative exchanges between the movement’s leading figures in Australia, by presenting artworks in meaningful groups. The exhibition will also consider the broader global context, personal relationships and artistic interactions of Australian Impressionists and those working internationally, juxtaposing Australian works with those by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, James Whistler and others.
Impressionism became an international movement. So there’s something really informative about seeing different takes on a similar subject matter or on a similar mode of working. Iso Rae studied alongside McCubbin and after she moved to France won international acclaim, exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon. Rae’s style in Young Girl, Etaples (c1892) is French, but perhaps her Australian heritage shows in her interest in the play of intense light and shadow: technique, palette and subject matter.
The exhibition will chart the course of the late-C19th art movement, highlighting the key milestones and figures at the centre of their era of experimentation. This 2021 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Exhibition will evoke the energy and intellectual dynamism of the period. And it will emphasise the thinking of the artists themselves, revealing the social connections, artistic influences and personal relationships that united these radicals.
Boston’s MFA is an institution well known for its collection of French Impressionist paintings. The collection benefited from the collecting efforts of individual Bostonians, some of whom visited the artists in France back then. Mary Cassatt, the American-born artist integral to the French Impressionist movement, advocated among her fellow Americans for their patronage of her French colleagues. This ensured that many great Impressionist paintings found their way into important American collections. Thank you Boston!
Presented thematically in 10 sections, the exhibition will open with early works by Impressionism’s forebears, Eugène Boudin and painters of the Barbizon School, illustrating their intense influence on Monet’s use of painting outdoors en plein air, to capture changing conditions. The growth of the movement in later decades will be mapped via an exploration of the Impressionists’ favourite subjects and ideas. French Impressionism will amplify some of the key elements eg visible, distinctive strokes, vibrant colours and new perspectives.
For viewers not very familiar with impressionism, this will be a very welcome place of discovery. The word impression back in the late C19th was a rapid notation of an effect of weather, giving a quick look at the world around them. Their quick painting did not need to be taken home and polished up in the studio; it was something that had merit in and of itself. Visitors will delight in the beauty of these vividly coloured paintings, which still appeal 120+ years after they were created.
Visitors will experience the key elements of Impressionism, including distinctive brushwork, unique points of view, arresting use of colour, in places dear to the artists eg Paris, Argenteuil, Fontainebleau Forest, Giverny, the Normandy coast and Mediterranean coast. Still lifes, intimate interiors and outdoor street scenes by such artists as Manet, Renoir and Gustave Caillebotte will also feature.
Dance at Bougival, 1883, by Renoir.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Spring pasture, 1889, by Pissarro.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Museum Fine Arts Boston.
Holiday at Coogee Beach, 1888, by Tom Roberts.
Art Gallery NSW
MFA Boston’s curator Katie Hanson’s personal favourite painting (but not mine) is Manet’s Street Singer (1862), a portrait of a woman in a grey dress walking out of a cafe, holding a guitar and cherries. She says it captures that modern, inscrutable mystery of glimpsing a compelling stranger on the street, highlighted by her hand covering her mouth. Does it remind the viewer of the current pandemic?
**
Running concurrently with French Impressionism will be a companion show-case of Australian impressionists, called Titled She-Oak and Sunlight (April-Aug 2021). This show will feature 270+ works from local artists including Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, Charles Conder, Clara Southern and Jane Sutherland, drawn from the NGV’s collection as well as the National Gallery of Australia, state galleries and private collections. She-Oak and Sunlight was named after a Tom Roberts painting. The works will explore the relationships and international influences behind Australia’s most recognisable and important art movement.
Highlights include McCubbin’s The Pioneer and Roberts’ well-known Shearing the Rams (1890) which depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed, and A Break Away! And see Clara Southern’s An Old Bee Farm Warrandyte c1900, a nostalgic vision of the landscape, painted in a soft palette of twilight tones. Following conservation treatment, visitors may be able to appreciate the newly restored colours of Arthur Streeton’s Hawkesbury River 1896 and in Purple Noon’s Transparent Might, 1896.
The exhibition will also display lesser-known paintings by Iso Rae, May Vale, Jane Price and Ina Gregory, plus more widely recognisable works by John Russell andE Phillips Fox. It charts the creative exchanges between the movement’s leading figures in Australia, by presenting artworks in meaningful groups. The exhibition will also consider the broader global context, personal relationships and artistic interactions of Australian Impressionists and those working internationally, juxtaposing Australian works with those by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, James Whistler and others.
Impressionism became an international movement. So there’s something really informative about seeing different takes on a similar subject matter or on a similar mode of working. Iso Rae studied alongside McCubbin and after she moved to France won international acclaim, exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon. Rae’s style in Young Girl, Etaples (c1892) is French, but perhaps her Australian heritage shows in her interest in the play of intense light and shadow: technique, palette and subject matter.