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.

Towards the end of the 1880s it is said that Pierre-Auguste Renoir became dissatisfied with Impressionism, then still a relatively recent movement in the development of Western art. He began to travel more widely, first within France and then to Algeria, Spain and Italy, where he became influenced by other artists, including Delacroix, Velazquez and Titian. It is widely thought that his work during this time is his most fertile and innovative. And it is his paintings and sculptures from the final decades of his life that make up the Late Renoir exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Renoir and his family moved to the Mediterranean coast, specifically the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, in the hope that the climate there would help his rheumatoid arthritis. He frequently painted landscapes around the town, including the vineyards at Cagnes, pictured below.

This is just one of about 80 of Renoir’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Also, included in the exhibition are twenty works by other European artists of the day, including Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. The inclusion of the art of these painters attests to the influence Renoir had on the younger generations of artists at the time.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Vineyards at Cagnes, 1908. Oil on canvas. 45 cm x 59 cm. © Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Colonel and Mrs. E. W. Garbisch.

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The Renoir exhibition is on until 6 September: exhibition website.

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.

Edouard Manet, The Fife Player, 1866. Oil on canvas. 160 cm x 97 cm. © Musée d’Orsay.

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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.

Georges Seurat, La Tour Eiffel 1889. Oil on canvas. 24 cm × 15.2 cm. © The Legion of Honor.

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The Birth of Impressionism exhibition currently showing at the de Young Museum in San Francisco is a big deal. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Make sure you visit the show this summer, or you may miss out on the most important show this museum has hosted since reopening its doors in 2005.

Nearly 100 Impressionist works of art been sent to the de Young from the Musee d’Orsay, which is benefitting from a renovation. And these are paintings that will not disappoint. With artwork by Degas, Manet, Monet and Renoir, just to name a few, how can one be unfulfilled after a visit? The most difficult question this exhibition raises is deciding when to return for a second or third viewing.

As you enter the galleries, you can feel the importance of the artwork surrounding you. The paintings are displayed in a manner similar to how they will be once the renovation at the d’Orsay is complete. Wooden floors and carefully chosen wall colors allow the paintings to really pop and express themselves. Think of this when you come to The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte. The browns and whites on the canvas appear so rich they practically glisten.

What did surprise me about this show was the piece I left still thinking about. While it was very exciting to see Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother (a.k.a Whistler’s Mother) by James McNeill Whistler, and Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet, in person, they weren’t new discoveries, as I had seen reproductions many times before. The painting I am still thinking about, and will return to see is the Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille. Dying a tragic early death during the Franco-Prussian War, Bazille is known for painting en plein air, and this is the first opportunity I had to see one of his paintings in person. I was struck by the direct awkwardness of this painting. In it, you can see an artist who is still struggling to find his style, and unfortunately never had the chance to. I wanted to stare at this piece all day.

If you need any reason to visit San Francisco this summer, the Birth of Impressionism is it. As an encore, there will be a second exhibition from the d’Orsay in the fall, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond. The de Young had the distinction of being the only museum in North America to host this upcoming show, and the only museum in the world to host both of these traveling exhibitions from the d’Orsay.

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

Gustave Caillebotte Les raboteurs de parquet (The Floor Scrappers). 1875. Oil on canvas. 102 cm x 146.5 cm. ©RMN, Musée d’Orsay.

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The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, will host a major exhibition of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces from the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. for the first half of 2011.

The Houston show will have a selection of 50 paintings from the National Gallery of Art´s 19th century French collection while the galleries that usually house these works are closed for repair and renovation. The National Gallery´s Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection includes work from the greatest artists active in France from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century, a collection that ranks amongst the finest of any collection in the world. These include works by Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh.

‘Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art’ is to be installed in the MFAH’s European galleries, Audrey Jones Beck Building. The MFAH’s collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art will be kept on display for the duration of the temporary exhibition. But, about 50 works from other periods will be temporarily removed to make way for the loan pieces.

To accompany the exhibition will be a 184-page, fully illustrated book that provides a history of the collection and individual entries on each painting.

The exhibition opens 20 February, and runs through to 22 May 2011. Entry will be by timed-entry tickets, and these go on sale from 13 December 2010. Click here to link through to the Museum of Fine Arts’ website.

Claude Monet, Woman with a Parasol —Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875. Oil on canvas, 19.48 cm x 24 cm @ The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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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.

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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.

Through one hundred paintings of some of the great artists living and painting in France from the mid to late nineteenth century this exhibition demonstrates the changes that took place in Western art at this time, i.e. the birth of what was to be called Impressionism.

The following is a list of just a few of the paintings on display at de Young this summer:
The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866)
Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866–1868)
Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867)
The Magpie by Claude Monet (1868)
The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872)
The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873–1876)
The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)
Red Roofs, Corner of the Village, Winter Effect by Camille Pissarro (1877)
Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877)
Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet (1878)
Snow at Louveciennes by Alfred Sisley (1878)
L’Estaque by Paul Cézanne (1878–1879)
Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878–1879)
The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)

An impressive list of artists and paintings indeed!

Claude Monet. Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878. 1878. Oil on canvas. 49 cm x 80 cm. ©RMN, Musée d’Orsay.

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay at de Young runs from 22 May through to 6 September, 2010. This exhibition will be followed by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, 25 September 2010 until 18 January 2011.

Click here, for more information about the exhibition. If you have seen the exhibition, leave a comment below.

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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.

Two are very large (rectangular, one being a triptych). These are both of the water lilies. The single canvas is largely pale colors, ethereal and delicate and worked on over several years. The triptych is amazing; we drown in the blue and swim to the light reflection of clouds in the center. We fall into it.

The four smaller paintings (though by no means small) use richer, darker colors and almost violent, slashing and swirling strokes. Here is the old man in his studio and his garden; age has not quieted him. This is not mouse pad Monet. A late painting of the famous Japanese bridge is startling. The bridge is almost lost in the intense oranges and rusts and maroons. Gone is any sense of the tranquility which has made him the most loved artist of our time, the sense that all is well and orderly. One thinks of what he had endured then! He had lost his wife Alice, his beloved older son, his beautiful step daughter, and suffered the death and destruction of the First World War. He had lost many colleagues of his youth. He was also in danger of blindness.

In another painting, a wispy African lily plant which he planted at the pond’s edge seems to stretch up and lean sideways with some tremendous inner fierceness.

By his final brush strokes at the age of eighty-six, Claude Monet had been painting nearly seventy years. He had been born into a world where the railroad was new; he lived to see early planes, the telephone, and of course the car which he owned but never drove himself. He went from the poverty of his early years as an artist when he sometimes had no paint or food and was thrown naked from his rooms in the middle of the night because he could not pay. But some people felt he was old school in his last years; the days when impressionism was new were long past.

The MoMA exhibition holds both his tranquility and his rage. His times and losses shaped him and changed him. It was a long road from the boy of twenty who came to Paris in 1860 to become a painter.

Stephanie Cowell is a New York City novelist whose novel about the struggling years of the young Claude Monet, Claude & Camille, will be published April 6th, 2010 by Crown.

Claude Monet. Agapanthus. 1914–26. Oil on canvas. 198.2 cm x 178.4 cm. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Sylvia Slifka in memory of Joseph Slifka.

Yesterday, 24 February 2010, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Clinic jointly hosted a symposium exploring the possibility of making art accessible to dementia patients.

Alzheimer’s disease is said to start in what is the brain’s memory center – by destroying cells and causing problems with thinking and behaviour. During the disease’s early to mid stage, however, those areas of the brain that govern emotion, perception and creativity are thought to remain intact. These undisturbed areas of the brain make it possible for patients to respond to visual arts and music, even when they have lost connection to the everyday world.

“It makes good sense if you think about the neurology of the disease,” said Dr. Randolph Schiffer, director of the Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas. “Art can be a way to reach and maintain the healthy areas” of the brain.

Schiffer, also a speaker at the Cleveland symposium, said the joint programme highlights a trend among physicians to approach Alzheimer’s treatment in less of a medical way. “I try to talk to them and relate to them and hold on to that sense of who they are,” he said. “Our task is to help the person hold themselves together as long as possible and help with transitions.”

There is not a lot of research to prove Alzheimer’s patients respond to art and music, but Schiffer says he and other physicians have seen it. Forty volunteers from both the art museum and the clinic will learn to tailor art tours for patients with dementia. Special tours resulting form this collaboration will begin in the next few months. Clinical physicians will be encouraged to advise their patients and their caregivers to sign up for the tours.

The Cleveland project follows in the footsteps of the very successful MeetMe project in New York City, the Museum of Modern Art’s Alzheimer’s Project: Making Art Accessible to People with Dementia.