Oh to be in San Francisco this summer! The beautiful West Coast city aside, the two Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the de Young and the Legion of Honor, are hosting two major Impressionist exhibitions. At de Young is Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, while the Legion of Honor is hosting Impressionist Paris: City of Light, a special exhibition that provides historical background to de Young’s Birth of Impressionism show. [Read more →]

Mary Towsey outside Galerie 60, Giverny.

Besides Monet’s house and garden and the Musée de Impressionismes, there are at least six other galleries in Giverny that display contemporary art. Some of these are dedicated to the work of one artist, others have a rolling programme of exhibitions throughout the season. So if you are visiting Giverny for the day or even staying in or near Giverny overnight there really is a lot to do. [Read more →]

The Grand Palais in Paris will host a major exhibition of Claude Monet’s art from September 22, 2010 to January 24, 2011.

The first major exhibition in France of Claude Monet’s work in over 30 years will take place at the Grand Palais in Paris from September 22, 2010 to January 24, 2011. It has been reported that there will be over 200 paintings on display from both French and foreign museums. [Read more →]

Claude Monet. The Japanese Footbridge [Le Pont japonais]. c. 1920–22. Oil on canvas. 89.5 cm x 116.3 cm. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Grace Rainey Rogers Fund.

Review of ‘Monet’s Water Lilies’ at MoMA, New York

It took me a long time to get down to the much-loved exhibit of six of Monet’s late garden paintings, created in his 70s and 80s at Giverny. Fortunately, though the one large exhibit room was crowded, one could still spend some time with the paintings which I did. [Read more →]

Claude Monet. London, Parliament: sun through the fog
[Londres, le Parlement: trouée de soleil dans le brouillard]. 1904. Oil on canvas 81 cm x 92 cm. © Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

I recently visited Canberra and went to the National Gallery of Australia to see the Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond exhibition that is on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This exhibition has attracted record-breaking attendances for an exhibition in that Gallery (it now stands in excess of 250,000 attendees). After Canberra the exhibition tours to Tokyo and San Francisco before returning to Paris. [Read more →]

“We predicted that we would get 250,000 people, but we didn’t predict that we would get 250,000 people six weeks before the finish of the exhibition and before Easter,” he said. “So we’re very thrilled about that.” Ron Radford, Director National Gallery of Australia, 2010.

The summer exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, has broken previous attendance records. The exhibition opened 4 December 2009, and on Friday 26 February Ron Radford, Director of the National Gallery, personally welcomed the 250 000th visitor. According to tourism statistics, around 70% of the visitors are from outside Canberra. The previous record was set in 1992, with Rubens and the Italian Renaissance which attracted 241 770 visitors. [Read more →]

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People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” Claude Monet, 1902.

As Claude Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral 30 times at different times of the day and in different weather conditions over a period of a few months, it is not that surprising then that the Cathedral will play an important part in this year’s summer festival to celebrate the impressionists in Normandy. [Read more →]

‘Things don’t advance very steadily, primarily because each day I discover something I hadn’t seen the day before … In the end, I am trying to do the impossible.’ Claude Monet, 1892

The Impressionists by Night in Rouen, as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 summer festival, will take place each night, 1 June – 30 September, in front of the Musée des Beaux Arts and the Cathedral, the same Cathedral Claude Monet painted some 30 times in changing lighting conditions. [Read more →]

One of the many events planned for Rouen as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 festival this summer is ‘Les Nuits Impressionnistes‘. The Impressionists by Night is a spectacular combination of sound and light, modern technology and cultural heritage, a Cathedral and a Fine Art Museum. [Read more →]

Camille Pissarro, View of Rouen, 1898, oil on canvas. © Honolulu Academy of Arts

The role played by the city of Rouen in the history of Western art at the end of the nineteenth century is immense. Camille Pissarro is said to have remarked that “Rouen is a beautiful as Venice”.

This summer the museum of Fine Art in Rouen will host a major exhibition of Impressionist artists as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 festival: