Monet, Giverny & Normandy » Exhibitions & Museums

Impressionists Back on Display at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge

Thomas — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:40:47 +0000

“The Fitzwilliam is engaged in a staged programme of refurbishment of its galleries which provides an opportunity not only to refresh the displays but, just as importantly, to bring the fruits of new research and interpretations to bear on the understanding of our works. The beautiful new Impressionist gallery, one of the jewels of the Founder’s Building, achieves all of these aims in what is sure to be one of our most popular displays.” Dr Timothy Potts, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, 2011

A number of art museums are either in the process of refurbishing their galleries or have just re-opened newly renovated galleries, and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England is one. In November last year Gallery 5, one of their more popular galleries, re-opened after an extensive make-over. This is the Fitzwilliams’ French Impressionists and other late 19th and early 20th century permanent exhibition.

The newly refurbished Impressionist gallery follows is the latest in a series of other recently renovated art and archaeology galleries, including the Egyptian gallery, the 19th and 20th century British Art gallery and the Classical Greece and Rome gallery. Besides enhanced display techniques that allow visitors to better appreciate these wonderful works of art, the display includes more detailed information about the history of Impressionism, and also how these specific paintings came to be in the Museum’s collection.

When the Impressionists were curating their own exhibitions in Paris, exhibitions that challenged every aspect of the art establishment, one of the things they did was to hang their paintings on backgrounds that were bold and striking in colour. And, they would even use several different colours within a single exhibition. Not only were they doing something radical with what they painted and the techniques they used, but they followed through with their radical approach to also include how their paintings were experienced. And now, over a century later art galleries around the world are returning to these ideas. At the Fitzwilliam, the paintings have now been hung on dramatic dark blue-grey walls.

Jane Munro, the curator of the Impressionist gallery says,

“It is wonderful to be able to redisplay their works in an appropriately vibrant setting that allows their innovative, light-infused paintings to be seen and understood as never before in the museum.”

The Fitzwilliam Museum, situated in the heart of Cambridge, has one of the finest collections of French Impressionist paintings. The artists represented in the collection include Claude Monet (see above), Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro (see below), Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Pierre Auguste Renoir. So visitors to the museum will not be disappointed! Have you been, what did you think? Leave us a comment below.

Camille Pissarro, 1895, Effet de neige a Erangy, avec un pommier. Oil on canvas, 38.2 x 46.2 cm. © The Fitzwilliam

Fancy a unique, all inclusive three day break in Normandy, visiting Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny as well as Pissarro’s house in Eragny-sur-Epte, and a chauffeured day trip along the Normandy coast where both Monet and Pissarro painted, including Etretat?

Read about the 3 day break on my Basse Copette website

The Porte d’Aval at Etretat, the inspiration for Monet’s painting above.

Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists

Thomas — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:02:53 +0000

A group of students recently got in touch to tell me about their involvement and learning in during the preparations for an exhibition of impressionist art soon to open. Reading their blog it sounds like they have innovative lecturers who have helped make the most of a wonderful opportunity. Rarely do we get to read about the preparations of an exhibition, and the excitement of the students is infectious – well, who would not be excited about experiencing behind the scenes as this class is. Read their introduction below, and have a look at their bog – it is a fascinating read.

Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists is coming to the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, Virginia on October 22nd, 2011.

Featuring forty paintings including two by Monet, three by Pissarro, two by Boudin, a beautiful Bazille landscape based on a Monet sketch, two by Renior, and others, students enrolled in the museum seminar at The College of William & Mary have a rare and exceptional opportunity to work behind the scenes of this major exhibition. The class changes everyday so students never know exactly what to expect – a day in Professor John Spike’s class ranges from monographic lectures on the artists in the show, to talks from the Museum Director Dr. Aaron De Groft, to hands on work towards the hanging of the show. During the first week of class students chose their specific task teams including tour guides and docent training, public relations, creating education material, writing painting labels, and even putting together a musical tour to accompany the show, and they have been hard at work ever since.

The exhibition is on until 22 January 2012. For more information on what students are up to, countdown to the opening with the class blog.

Caillebotte Nude Acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Thomas — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:14:17 +0000

Gustave Caillebotte, 1884, Man at His Bath. Oil on canvas 183 cm x 137 cm. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Just a few days ago it was revealed that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was selling eight impressionist paintings to raise money to pay for a painting by Gustave Caillebotte. Man at His Bath, painted by Caillebotte in 1884, is widely recognised to be one of the artist’s finest pieces. The painting is the first impressionist nude in the museum’s permanent collection. But this decision of the MFA’s has vexed a few art bloggers and critics. Not everyone is happy that eight impressionist pieces have been sold for a painting of what Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe says “is not an eye-catching celebration of the human form, a la Michelangelo’s ‘David.’ Rather, it’s an everyday view of … well, mostly of an everyday butt.”

I can not help but think Lehigh is missing a point or two. That anyone should suggest in a critical manner that Caillebotte’s painting is ‘mundane’ or ‘everyday’ has surely forgotten that that is just what the French impressionists were trying to achieve, they were rebelling against the establishment and often painted the mundane aspects of everyday life that had been rejected until then. Also, the impressionists were not interested in representing the body in its finest form ‘a la Michelangelo’ – that is just what they were fighting against.

Lehigh suggests “It’s probably not worth selling scenes by Monet, Gauguin, Sisley, Pissarro, and Renoir to acquire that perfectly mundane scene.” George T.M. Shackelford, Chair, Art of Europe and Arthur K. Solomon Curator of Modern Art at the MFA, Boston, is a little more certain, “Adding a work like this one gives an indoor, urban accent to a collection that is dominated by the sun-drenched pastoral art of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. With Man at His Bath, building on great strengths in the work of Manet and Degas, we’ve added another icon to the collection.” I am therefore not that convinced Caillebotte’s nude is an unworthy addition to the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

But Tyler Green, an art blogger at ArtInfo, does raise an interesting point. He contrasts the MFA’s selling off at once the eight paintings with deaccesion strategies at other institutions such as the Hirshhorn, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art who have been steadily deaccesioning items from their permanent collections over the years. Green suggests the latter strategy allows for a less desperate approach to replacing existing items in a collection for something new.

The following are the eight paintings that have been sold by the MFA to raise funds to acquire the Caillebotte’s painting of some bloke’s butt:

Maxime Camille Louis Maufra, Gust of Wind, 1899
Claude Monet, The Fort of Antibes, 1888
Camille Pissarro, View from the Artist’s Window, Eragny, 1885
Paul Gauguin, Forest Interior (Sous-Bois), 1884
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bust Portrait of a Young Woman, c1890
Alfred Sisley, Overcast Day at Saint-Mammes, c1880
Alfred Sisley, Saint-Mammes: Morning (Le Matin), 1881
Vasily Vereshchagin, Pearl Mosque Delhi, c1880-90

I can not help but wonder if the fuss was over the acquisition of a full frontal nude of some buxom blonde would we have the same reaction? Of course we can not know that now. But I am am sure Gustave Caillebotte would have been amused with the fuss. Caillebotte was himself a collector of art, and owned paintings by a few of the artists the Museum of Fine Arts is now parting with for cash.

The problem is that some people see museum collections as set in stone, and I do not agree with such a premise. Collections are not finite and their curators strive to improve them. We all accept that museums do their best to acquire new pieces, as they become available and if they have funds. Other pieces are bequeathed to museums, given on ‘permanent’ loan. When these new pieces enter the collection, they do not ‘violate’ the existing collection, they add to it in some way – or so the curator hopes. But the same applies to getting rid of a few pieces, deaccesion is the correct term but it amounts to the same thing. If a curator decides to sell of a few pieces in an attempt to improve the collection, that should be as welcome as a curator who tried to add to a collection.

Personally, I would not give either of the two bland Sisley riverscapes wall space, but then I would not give up the Pissarro for anything. I am not a fan of Sisley, but after all the grand French impressionism exhibitions in France last year, I have a deep appreciation for Pisarro’s work above all the others.

Gustave Caillebotte’s almost life size painting Man and His Bath can be seen in the upcoming ‘Degas and the Nude’ exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (9 October 2011 – 5 February 2012). The exhibition travels to Paris, where the painting will be on view in the Musée d’Orsay from 12 March to 1 July, 2012. This is the second painting by Caillebotte in the museum’s collection, the other being Fruit Displayed on a Stand (c 1881–82), purchased in 1979.

About to be auctioned by Sotheby’s, in their 2 November sale.
Camille Pisarro, View from the Artist’s Window, Eragny, 1885. Oil on Canvas 54.5 cm x 65.1 cm. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Online Tickets for Monet at the Grand Palais, Paris

Thomas — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:17:59 +0000

Tickets for the Monet Exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris are no longer available online.

According to a spokesperson at the Grand Palais, there are no plans to make more tickets available online. You are able to buy tickets at the Grand Palais, and the queue for entry is between 1 and 2 hours long.

You can still purchase a copy of the Grand Palais Exhibition Catalogue online.

But remember that there is also another Monet exhibition on at the Musée Marmottan Monet, until 20 February 2010.

In my opinion, while the Monet exhibition at the Grand Palais should not be missed – the exhibition at the Marmottan is in fact a better exhibition. There may be more paintings on show in the Grand Palais, but there are a number of significant paintings not on show that are important canvasses in the development of Monet’s style and contribution to Impressionism.

This is also a temporary exhibition, and includes many other personal effects that belonged to the artist. The Musée Marmottan has the World’s largest collection of Monet paintings, not all of which are on permanent display. For this temporary exhibition, everything in the Museum’s collection is on display until February. It really should not be overlooked, the hype over the exhibition at the exhibition at the Grand Palais notwithstanding.

Read more about Monet at Musée Marmatton, Paris 2010 – 2011, and book your tickets on that page. You reserve a ticket for 10.45 and are allowed entry any time during the day.

Monet at Musée Marmatton, Paris 2010 – 2011

Thomas — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 11:02:43 +0000

Claude Monet, 1873, Impression, soleil levant. Oil on canvas, 48 x 63 cm. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.

There are currently two temporary Monet exhibitions in Paris that will close in 2011. There is the Monet retrospective at the Grand Palais – organised by the Musée d’Orsay, and there is another at the Musée Marmatton Monet, from 7 October 2011 through to 20 February 2011. This exhibition, Claude Monet: son musée, presents for the first time the whole collection of Monet owned by the Musée Marmatton Monet – the biggest single collection of Monet paintings and other artefacts in the World. On show are 136 pieces by Monet, as well as a few others by his contemporaries.

The Marmottan Museum became a museum in 1934 following an incredibly generous donation to l’Académie des Beaux-Arts by Paul Marmottan. Later, in the 1960s Michel Monet gave the Museum a significant number of his father’s paintings, drawing and other objects.

The paintings the Museum has in its collection are some of the more iconic ones – those paintings missing from the retrospective on at the Grand Palais. These include the painting that gave rise to the Impressionist movement, namely Impression, soleil levant (above, a painting depicting sunrise over the harbour at Le Havre), paintings of the parliament buildings in London, the Cathedral in Rouen, the Japanese bridge at Giverny and of course some of his final paintings of the water-lilies.

BOOK YOUR TICKETS FOR THE MONET EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEE MARMOTTAN MONET HERE
On the first page, click on a time (within a box – those times not in a box are nolonger available) and date of your choice. The next page will automatically appear. On the next page you will be asked to first choose the number of tickets, and in what category. Then lower down the same page, you choose the payment option: unless you have a choose “Carte bancaire, Carte privative & Cartes Cadeaux” – credit cards being ‘carte bancaire’. Then click on ‘Poursuivre’ at the bottom right.

Opening Hours:
11.00 am – 18.00 Tuesday to Sunday
11.00 am – 21.00 Thursday
Closed on Mondays, 25 December, 1 January and 1 May.

Entry Fee €9
Reduced price €5, children under 8 free

Getting there:
2 rue Louis-Boilly
Métro Ligne 9 Muette
RER Ligne C Boulainvilliers

And, don’t forget about the exhibition Claude Monet, at the Grand Palais, Paris.

Opening Tomorrow at the Grand Palais, Paris: Claude Monet

Thomas — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:11:04 +0000

Please Note: This exhibition has now ended. If you are visiting Paris and would like to see Monet’s art, click here for my >> Paris Impressionist Guide … for all the information about Monet and the other French Impressionists in Paris.

Claude Monet, 1878, The Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30, 1878. Oil on Canvas 81 cm x 50 cm. © Musée d’Orsay.

Today, on the eve of what is being billed as one of the most significant art exhibitions in Paris for years, it is hard to imagine that the artist in the spotlight was once dismissed by the very nation that now holds him up as a national hero. Tomorrow, 22 September 2010, is the opening at the Grand Palais in Paris of the first major retrospective in thirty years of Claude Monet’s work.

Today Nicholas Sarkozy, the President of France, in a Foreword to the exhibition catalogue describes Claude Monet as “unmistakable emblem of the international influence of French culture”. Nearly 150 years ago, art critics scoffed at Monet and his friends’ new style, calling it “delusional”. Prominently displayed in the retrospective then is Monet’s Rue Montorgueil (above), a painting that depicts the celebrations at the end of the World Fair of 1878 and demonstrates French nationalist and republican enthusiasm of the time.

The Monet exhibition in Paris is expected to break all attendance records – which is not surprising really given that no movement in the history of Western art is more popular than Impressionism. A movement of art for which Claude Monet is widely regarded as its father.

With nearly 160 of Monet’s oil paintings on exhibit, this exhibit is by far the biggest collection of his paintings bought together in one exhibition. Sadly, because of institutional rivalries, some of Monet’s iconic images will be missing from the exhibition – including the painting that gave its name to the movement, i.e. the painting of the Le Havre harbour at sun rise, Impressionism, soleil levant (below).

To see those ‘missing’ paintings – go to Musée Marmottan Monet, where from 7 October 2010 – 20 February 2011 their entire collection will be on display for the first time ever.

These paintings aside, the Monet exhibition in Paris is a must for anyone with even the remotest interest Impressionist art.

Visiting Paris? See my Paris Impressionist Guide, where you will find information on other Impressionist-related sites and museums in the French capital.

It is no longer possible to buy ticket for this exhibition online. You can, however, buy tickets online for what I believe is a much better exhibition at the Musée Marmottan Monet, also in Paris, the museum that has the World’s biggest collection of Monet’s paintings and drawings. For more information, and a link to buy tickets, click here: Monet at the Musée Marmottan, Paris.

Opening times:
Friday to Monday 9h to 22h,
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 10h à 22h,
Thursday 10h à 20h
Last access – 45 minutes before closing
24 and 31 December 2010 – the exhibition shuts at 18h
25 December 2010 – the exhibition is closed

Entry Fee 12€
Reduced to 9€ for people aged between 13 and 25, and unemployed

Would you like to take a 5 day guided tour of Monet’s Normandy, while staying in a luxury B&B? Now is your last chance this year to see Monet’s garden in Giverny, and then visit the two Monet exhibitions in Paris, as well as some of the other landscapes and cityscapes in Normandy the Impressionist artists painted … Guided Tours of Monet’s Normandy.

Buy a copy of the Catalgue online – cheaper than at the gallery.

Need a hotel? click here for best deals on Paris hotels.

Impressionism on iPhone: the Impressionist Exhibition in Edinburgh

Thomas — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:58:35 +0000

It seems as if there is an iPhone app for just about everything these days. Not to be outdone, the National Galleries of Scotland have produced an Impressionism art iPhone app for their Impressionist Gardens exhibition currently on show in Edinburgh until 17 October 2010.

The app, which applies to both the exhibition in Edinburgh and the associated activities at the Royal Botanical Gardens, contains basic information, including a calendar of events. There is a map of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh that will lead you to specific locations in the gardens that provide quite spectacular views.

For the exhibition itself, there is specifically produced audio and video pieces that enable exhibition visitors learn more about specific works of art on show. While these are great, they are limited given there are over 90 paintings on display.

Providing exhibition visitors with this sort of information for their iPhones is obviously one way in which art galleries start to make use of new technology, and should be applauded. Sadly, this particular app is quite basic, it is not that imaginative. It is little more than a iPhone equivalent of the once standard brochure. But, this is the Gallery’s first go at producing an iPhone app, and it is free. If you have an iPhone (or an iPad or an iPod Touch) and are able to get to the exhibition, it is better than nothing. Click here to go to the iTunes website and download the app free of charge.

If you have downloaded the Impressionist Gardens iPhone app and visit the exhibition in Edinburgh, do come back to this blog and tell us what you think.

Exhibition: Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska

Thomas — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:43:44 +0000

There are only a few weeks left to catch the “Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism” exhibition on at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. The show comprises 38 paintings from the Joslyn Art Museum’s Impressionist collection and the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, a selection of mid nineteenth to early twentieth-century French and American landscapes. The likes of Claude Monet and Gustave Courbet are joined by some of the more important American Impressionists of the time, such as Frederick Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent.

Other French artists included in this joint venture between the Joslyn Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum are Camille Pissarro, Eugène Boudin and Jules Breton. There are also a number of American artists who lived and painted in Giverny, including Theodore Robinson, Willard Leroy Metcalf and Julian Alden Weir. Impressionism was not a definable style with a unified set of principles, but rather a group of artists who came together with shared ideas. The juxtaposition of various paintings enables viewers to appreciate this first-hand.

Also on exhibit at the Joslyn Art Museum at this time are three paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The three paintings from Boston that make up a small companion exhibit, entitled Beyond Impressionism, are:
Vincent van Gogh’s Enclosed Field with Ploughman, painted in 1889
Claude Monet’s Meadow at Giverny, painted in 1886
Paul Gauguin’s Women and a White Horse, painted in 1903

The two exhibitions are on until 12 September 2010. For further details, visit the Joslyn Art Museum’s website, click here.

Exhibition: ‘Birth of Impressionism’ in Nashville

Thomas — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:26:58 +0000

Have paintings will travel. The Birth of Impressionism exhibition, currently on show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, is headed next for the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. The exhibition, part of the Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay collection on the road while renovations in Paris are under way for the 25 anniversary in 2011, will open in Nashville 15 October 2010.

There will be about 100 mid to late 19th-century French paintings from the permanent collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The exhibition tells the story of the birth of Impressionism in France in the mid 19th century, and its developemnt through to the last 19th century, through a selection of important works by artists such as Courbet, Manet, Cézanne, Monet, and Renoir.

Although this is the same exhibition that was on show previously in Madrid and then San Francisco, the Nashville exhibition will have seventeen paintings not seen in the two previous shows. These include:
The Dance Foyer at the Opera on Rue Le Peletier by Edgar Degas (1872)
Ballet Rehearsal on the Set by Edgar Degas (1874)
Argenteuil by Claude Monet (1875)
Church at Vetheuil by Claude Monet (1879)
Emile Zola by Edouard Manet (1868)
The Woman with a White Jabot by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1880)
William Sisley by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1864)

“The Musee d’Orsay has the finest collection of French mid-to-late 19th-century art in the world,” said Frist Center Executive Director Susan H. Edwards. “In sharing these masterworks with the cities of Madrid, San Francisco and Nashville, the Musee d’Orsay offers an unparalleled cultural experience to people who might not have the opportunity to travel to Paris.”

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay at the First runs from 15 October 2010 through to 23 January 2011. Click here, to read more information about the exhibition. If you go and see the exhibition, please return and leave a comment below.

Be prepared, get the exhibition catalogue from Amazon:

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Guest Review: ‘Impressionist Paris’ at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco

Ashley Harrop — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:14:19 +0000

While the de Young museum in San Francisco has been hosting a globally advertised Impressionism exhibition from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, its sister museum, the Legion of Honor, has been keeping quite a secret. It, too, is exhibiting a show on the Impressionists, and some have argued it is even more exquisite than one at the de Young.

Impressionist Paris: City of Lights, which will be showing at the Legion of Honor through September 26th, was originally planned to compliment the Impressionist paintings currently being exhibited at the de Young by detailing the history of the city of Paris itself. But the end result is an exhibition that deserves far more praise. Filled primarily with works on paper from the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, which is housed in the Legion of Honor, many of these pieces are rarely shown to the public. This exhibition has given the Achenbach a chance to display some of their abundant collection, and for their new curator, James Ganz, to prove his worth by curating an show that rivals one of established Impressionist masterpieces. Not to be outdone, Impressionist Paris is filled with works by Cezanne, Degas, Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec and Vuillard, among others.

As I walked through the exhibition, I became even more excited as I entered each new gallery. While the first two rooms introduce the history of Paris with early photographs and newspaper images, Impressionist Paris really takes off in the third gallery. You’re greeted by Jean-Francois Raffaelli’s “Fashionable Young Woman on Boulevard des Italiens, Paris” – one of the few paintings in this exhibition, which draws you into the room. Each gallery after is full spectacular prints. I found myself drawn to many of the pieces that were part of L’estampe Moderne, a publications in the late 1890s whose covers were designed by Alphonse Mucha. To top off an excellent show, my favorite piece of art in all of San Francisco, ‘Eiffel Tower’ by Georges Seurat, can be found in the second to last gallery.

My only real complaint about this exhibition is the name. With two Impressionist exhibitions at two sister museums, both in San Francisco, more could have been done to distinguish the exhibit at the de Young, which is from Paris, from the exhibition at the Legion, which is about Paris. While they are both excellent art shows and definitely worth seeing, it can be rather frustrating to arrive at one museum, expecting to see the exhibition that is at the other.

Ashley Harrop is an Art Historian based in San Francisco and writes the No Onions Extra Pickles travel blog.

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