Exhibition: ‘Impressionist Paris’ at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

The two museums that make up the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the de Young and the Legion of Honor, are hosting concurrently two exhibitions on Impressionist art. The Birth of Impressionism exhibition at the de Young has one hundred masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. And, to provide a historical context to these well-known paintings, the Legion of Honor is hosting Impressionist Paris: City of Light.

With the invention and installation of the gas street lamp in the nineteenth century, Paris earned itself the name ‘city of light’. The street lights and their evening glow attracted a great deal of attention from various artists, authors, composers, but particularly visual artists, including painters, sculptors, printmakers, and photographers. And it was at about this time that the group of painters who would come to be known as the Impressionists were starting out in Paris.

The exhibition at the Legion of Honor explores various aspects of Parisian society and French art from about 1850 through to the end of the nineteenth century. On show are more than 180 prints, paintings, drawings, photographs, as well as illustrated books dating from 1850 to the early 1900s, taken from the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and other distinguished private collections.

There are picturesque, old views of the narrow streets and stone bridges by Charles Marville and Charles Meryon as well as colorful images of a more modern Parisian setting by such artists as Edgar Degas, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Georges Seurat. Various prints and periodicals which feature the work of Honoré Daumier, Edouard Manet, Paul Signac, and James Tissot convey significant events in the rise of illustrated art journalism. Black-and-white works on paper by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, and Paul Gauguin reveal another aspect of Parisian culture at this time. There are also galleries that are devoted to popular entertainment in late 19th-century Paris, including colorful images of the theater, café-concerts, circus, as well as the Expositions Universelles. The exhibition concludes with a colourful selection of posters from the turn of the 20th century by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, Théophile Steinlen, and Alphonse Mucha.

“This exhibition gives us a special opportunity to show off some of the Fine Arts Museums’ greatest treasures from its holdings of 19th-century French works on paper, including an outstanding group of new acquisitions that will be shown here for the first time,” says exhibition curator James A. Ganz. “It is conceived as a journey from the dark alleys of ‘Old Paris,’ at the dawn of the Impressionist era, to a world of color and light, culminating in a gallery of vibrant French posters from the turn of the 20th century.”

Charles Marville, Street lamp, 8 Place de l’Opera, 1870s. Albumen silver print from wet-colldion-on-glass negative © The Legion of Honor.

Impressionist Paris: City of Light at the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museum San Francisco, runs from 5 June to 26 September 2010.

Click here, for more information about the exhibition on the Legion of Honor’s website. If you have seen the exhibition, leave a comment below.

Looking for a hotel in San Francisco? Booking.com has over 150 Hotels in San Francisco to choose from. This is one of the leading international hotel comparison websites: making a reservation is easy, and if necessary so is changing your reservation. Once you make your reservation, you will receive all the necessary contact details by email.