Saturday, April 30, 2016

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing


Whitney Museum of American Art June 10 through September 25, 2016

National Gallery of Art from November 20, 2016 through March 5, 2017

De Young Museum in San Francisco from April 8 through August 6, 2017

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, from September 16, 2017 through January 8, 2018.



Stuart Davis: In Full Swing features 100 artworks by an artist whose formal brilliance and complexity captured the energy of mass culture and modern life. The exhibition is unusual in its focus on Davis’s mature work, from his paintings of consumer products of the early 1920s to the work left on his easel at his death in 1964, and in exploring Davis’s habit of using preexisting motifs as springboards for new compositions. The exhibition departs in significant ways from earlier presentations of the artist’s work. The exhibition omits Davis’s decade of apprenticeship to European modernism (following his introduction to it at the 1913 Armory Show) in favor of the series of breakthroughs he made beginning in 1921 with his paintings of tobacco packages and household products, and continuing into his last two decades in which he employed abstract shapes, brilliant color, and words to evoke the ebullience of popular culture.

“Stuart Davis has been called one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and the best American artist of his generation, his art hailed as a precursor of the rival styles of pop and geometric color abstraction,” remarks Barbara Haskell. “Faced with the choice early in his career between realism and pure abstraction, he invented a vocabulary that harnessed the grammar of abstraction to the speed and simultaneity of modern America. By merging the bold, hard-edged style of advertising with the conventions of avant-garde painting, he created an art endowed with the vitality and dynamic rhythms that he saw as uniquely modern and American. In the process, Davis achieved a rare synthesis: an art that is resolutely abstract yet at the same time exudes the spirit of popular culture.”

Co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,





Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Odol, 1924. Oil on cardboard, 24 x 18 in. (60.9 x 45.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Mary Sisler Bequest (by exchange) and purchase, 1997. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY





Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Percolator, 1927. Oil on canvas, 36 x 29 in. (91.4 x 73.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1956. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



Stuart Davis (1892–1964), New York Mural, 1932. Oil on canvas, 84 x 48 in. (213.4 x 122 cm). Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; purchase, R. H. Norton Trust. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY





Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Visa, 1951. Oil on canvas, 40 x 52 in. (101.6 x 132.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Mrs. Gertrud A. Mellon, 1953. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY


 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Colonial Cubism, 1954. Oil on canvas, 45 1/8 x 60 1/4 in. (114.6 x 153 cm). Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; gift of the T. B. Walker Foundation, 1955. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY




 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Fin, 196264. Casein and masking tape on canvas, 53 7/8 x 39 3/4 in. (136.8 x 101 cm). Private collection. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Owh! in San Pao, 1951. Oil on canvas, 52 3/16 × 42 in. (132.6 × 106.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 52.2. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Town Square, c. 1929. Watercolor, gouache, ink, and pencil on paper, 15 1/2 x 22 7/8 in. (39.4 x 58.1 cm). The Newark Museum; purchase 1930, The General Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Salt Shaker, 1931. Oil on canvas, 49 7/8 x 32 in. (126.7 x 81.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Edith Gregor Halpert, 1954. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Tropes de Teens, 1956. Oil on canvas, 45 1/4 x 60 1/4 in. (114.8 x 153 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photograph by Cathy Carver


 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), The Paris Bit, 1959. Oil on canvas, 46 1/8 × 60 1/16 in. (117.2 × 152.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 59.38. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY




 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Place Pasdeloup, 1928. Oil on canvas, 36 3/8 × 29 in. (92.4 × 73.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.170. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Report from Rockport, 1940. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. (61 x 76.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection, bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal, 1991. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
  

 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Semé, 1953. Oil on canvas, 52 x 40 in. (132 x 101.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art; George A. Hearn Fund, 1953. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Swing Landscape, 1938. Oil on canvas, 86 3/4 x 173 1/8 in. (220.3 x 400 cm). Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington; museum purchase with funds from the Henry Radford Hope Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 
 


Stuart Davis (1892–1964), American Painting, 1932/42–54. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 1/4 in. (101.6 x 127.7 cm). Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; on extended loan from the University of Nebraska at Omaha Collection. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



 
Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Egg Beater No. 2, 1928. Oil on canvas, 29 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (74.3 x 92.1 cm). Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY





Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Lucky Strike, 1921. Oil on canvas, 33 1/4 x 18 in. (84.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of the American Tobacco Company, Inc., 1951. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY



Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonne (Yale Art Gallery) (3 Vol. Set) 

In these three volumes, the editors have catalogued 1,749 artworks by Stuart Davis, including more than 600 works never previously illustrated, providing extensive documentation and information about each one.

Friday, April 29, 2016

SOTHEBY’S AUCTION OF MASTER PAINTINGS IN NEW YORK ON 26 MAY: Gabriel Metsu



Sotheby’s New   York   auction of Master  Paintings  on  26  May  2016  will feature one   of   the   finest Dutch   genre   scenes   remaining in private hands:



Gabriel Metsu’s An Officer Paying Court to a Young Woman (estimate   $6–8   million).

This refined interior stands as a lasting achievement of painting in the Golden Age of the mid-17th century, when Metsu and his peers    including  Johannes  Vermeer,  Gerrit  Dou  and  Frans  van  Mieris    were  creating  vivid  scenes of everyday life. The work is further distinguished by the many historical labels on its reverse, which tell its fascinating journey through one of the most momentousperiods in recent history. 

The picture entered  the  Viennese Rothschild  family’s  legendary collection  by  1866,  and  descended in the family for decades. The contents of the family’s palace in Vienna were targeted and seized by Nazi authorities in 1938, and the collection – including the Metsu – was removed to the central depot of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The RothschildMetsu was  one  of  the  masterpieces  selected  for  the  grandiose  museum  that  Hitler planned  to  construct  in  Linz.  When this  treasure  trove  was in  danger  of Allied  bombing,  the  Metsu  and some 6,500  other  paintings    including Jan  van  Eyck’s Ghent  Altarpiece    were moved  for  safekeeping  to  the  salt  mines  in  Altausee.   

 The Allied  Forces’  celebrated  Monuments  Men  later recovered these works, thwarting a plan by the Nazi district leader to destroy the mines in response to Hitler’s   Nero   Decree.   After   having   been   inventoried,   photographed   and   identified   by   the   Monuments  Men  as  the  property  of  the  Rothschild  family,  the present  picture  was  returned  to  Vienna in November 1945. At  this  time,  the  Baroness  von  Rothschild  was  determined  to  recover  her  collections  and  export  them  to  her  new  home  in  the  United  States.  She  was  granted  export  licenses  for  the  bulk  of  the works, but  only  on  the condition that she donate  a  number  of  her  most  important  pieces to  the  Austrian  state.  In  1948,  some  250  highlights  from  the  family collection  entered  the  inventories of Viennese  museums,  with  The  Rothschild  Metsu  returning  to  the Kunsthistorisches  Museum    the very museum where it had previously been held after its original seizure from the family palace.

Under  the  restitution  laws  introduced  in  Austria  in  1998,   the  Rothschild  family  was  able  to  reclaim  the  paintings  they  had  unwillingly  donated  in  1948.  And  so  it  was  that  The Rothschild  Metsu  was returned to the family, and sold at auction in 1999 to the present owner.

Christopher Apostle, Head of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department in New York, said:“Gabriel Metsu ranks as one of the most important painters of his day, and An Officer Paying Court to a Young Womanis both  a  beautiful  and  quintessential example  of  his  best work.  The  painting  represents  a  near  perfect  distillation  of  the  class  Golden  Age  genre  scene,  containing  many  of  the  hallmarks  of  this category: two elegant people dressed in rich fabrics, a dog – representing fidelity, or in this case a lack thereof – jugs and wine glasses, all set in a typical Dutch interior space. No finer work by the artist  has  ever  been  offered  at  auction,  making  our  May  sale  a  rare  opportunity  for  collectors  to acquire such a masterpiece.”

Painted circa 1658-60, An Officer Paying Court to a Young Woman is a testament to the time in which time  Metsu  was  at  the  peak  of  his  artistic  powers  and  commercial  popularity.  Having  begun  his  career  at  the  age  of  14  in  his  native  Leiden,  he  soon  established  himself  as  a  master  in  his  field  and  became a founding member of the painter’s guild in 1648. His early technique was influenced greatly by  Gerrit  Dou,  whose  transformational  style  ushered  in  a  taste  for  small  scale,  minutely-detailed pictures featuring an excess of genre subjects.

Once  Metsu   moved   to   Amsterdam   in   1654,   he   found   himself   gravitating   towards   portraying   elegantly-dressed  upper  class  subjects,  shifting  away  from  large-scale  historical,  allegorical  and  religious  subjects    at  the  time  dominated  by  Rembrandt  and  his  followers.  In  Amsterdam,  Metsu  discovered  a  rapidly  expanding  market  for  this  underrepresented  collecting  category,  and  was  able  to carve out his niche as the preeminent genre painter. 

An  Officer Paying Court to a Young  Woman is  a  quintessential  example  of  the  artist’s  unique  style,  drawn from the very best elements of Dutch genre painting. Set in a quiet moment inside of a tavern, the painting depicts a silent exchange between an elegantly dressed man and woman. Of particular beauty are the figure’s luxurious costumes, which mirror Metsu’s meticulous application of paint to mimic the play of light. 


Sotheby's 2009


Gabriel Metsu A WOMAN SELLING GAME FROM A STALL
Estimate   1,200,000 — 1,800,000  GBP
 LOT SOLD. 1,161,250 GBP


Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Turner's Whaling Pictures at The Met May 10–August 7, 2016

J.M.W. Turner's Quartet of Whaling Paintings United for First Time in New Exhibition

Turner's Whaling Pictures, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 10, will be the first exhibition to unite the series of four whaling scenes painted by the great British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) near the end of his career. The quartet of paintings—comprising



Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775-1851). Whalers, ca. 1845. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1896 
The Met's Whalers (ca. 1845)  and its three companions from Tate Britain—were among the last seascapes exhibited by Turner, for whom marine subjects were a creative mainstay. The topic of whaling resonated with some of Turner's favorite themes: modern maritime labor, Britain's global naval empire, human ambition and frailty, and the awe-inspiring power of nature termed the Sublime.

Shown in pairs at the Royal Academy in London in 1845 and 1846, the whaling canvases confounded critics with their "tumultuous surges" of brushwork and color, which threatened to obscure the motif; yet the pictures earned admiration for the brilliance and vitality of their overall effects.




Whalers

Date Exhibited 1845

 Oil paint on canvas
From the Tate: This is the first of two whaling subjects Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1845 (followed by two more in 1846), probably painted in the hope of selling them to his patron Elhanan Bicknell, an investor in the whaling industry.

The four pictures were inspired by Thomas Beale’s Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839), with this painting based on an account of the pursuit of a whale in the North Pacific. At the right the creature has been harpooned and is bleeding, while men in three boats stand with their arms raised to strike again.



Whalers (Boiling Blubber) Entangled in Flaw Ice, Endeavouring to Extricate Themselves

Date Exhibited 1846

Oil paint on canvas
From the Tate: The last of Turner’s whaling paintings shows the boiling of blubber for processing into oil. The creature laid out on the ice at the right of the picture may have been based on a whale caught in the Thames in 1842, as well as on images by other artists.
As the title makes clear, the success of the whalers is threatened by the frozen water. A reference to this incident is made in the companion to this painting which shows the Erebus, a boat the Admiralty had promised, but failed, to send to rescue ships trapped in the ice. 

Turner's Whaling Pictures will offer a unique opportunity to consider the paintings as an ensemble and to contemplate their legacy, including their possible impact on Herman Melville's epic novel Moby–Dick, published months before Turner's death in 1851. It is not certain that Melville saw the paintings when he first visited London in 1849, but he was unquestionably aware of them. Aspects of Melville's novel are strikingly evocative of Turner's style.

In addition to the four paintings that will be on view, a selection of related watercolors, prints, books, and wall quotes will also be displayed and will offer insight into Turner's paintings and their possible relationship with Melville's text.

A whaling harpoon, on loan from the South Street Seaport Museum, and whale oil lamps from The Met's collection will also be on view. This focus exhibition will allow viewers to engage closely with the output of these two great 19th–century artists, and to assess for themselves whether the British painter inspired one of the crowning achievements of American literature.

Turner's Whaling Pictures is organized by Alison Hokanson, Assistant Curator, and Katharine Baetjer, Curator, both of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Paintings.



Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775-1851). Whalers, ca. 1845. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1896

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

THE OPEN-AIR STUDIO The Impressionists in Normandy






Musée Jacquemart-André 
18 March - 25 July 2016

This spring, the Musée Jacquemart-André is presenting an ensemble of some fifty or so prestigious artworks—from both private collections and major American and European museums—that retrace the history of Impressionism, from the forefathers of the movement to the Great Masters.

The 19th century saw the emergence of a new pictorial genre: ‘plein-air’ or outdoor landscape painting. This pictorial revolution, born in England, would spread to the continent in the 1820s and over the course of a century, Normandy would become the preferred destination of many avant-garde painters. The region’s stunning and diverse landscapes, coupled with the wealth of its architectural heritage, had much to please artists. 

Furthermore, the growing fashion for sea-bathing attracted many wealthy individuals and families who could easily access Normandy by either boat or stage-coach, and later by train. Its popularity was also increased due to its enviable location—halfway between London and Paris, the two art capitals of the period.

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, British landscape artists such as Turner, Bonington, and Cotman travelled to Normandy, with their boxes of watercolours, while the French—Géricault, Delacroix, Isabey—made their way to London to discover the English school. 

From these exchanges, a French landscape school was born, with Corot and Huet at the helm. In their wake, another generation of painters would in turn explore the region (Delacroix, Riesener, Daubigny, Millet, Jongkind, Isabey, Troyon), inventing a new aesthetic. This artistic revolution truly began to take form at the beginning of the 1860s, the fruit of lively discussions and exchanges at the Saint-Siméon Farm in Honfleur on Normandy’s Flower Coast, increasingly popular with the crème de la crème of this new school of painting. These included Boudin, Monet and Jongkind—an inseparable trio—but also their friends: Courbet, Daubigny, Bazille, Whistler, and Cals...And of course, Baudelaire, who was the first to celebrate in 1859, the ‘meteorological beauties’ of Boudin’s paintings. 

Not far away, in the hedgerows and woodlands of the Normandy countryside, Degas painted his first horse races at Haras-du-Pin and Berthe Morisot took up landscape painting, while at Cherbourg, Manet would revolutionize seascapes. For several decades, Normandy would be the preferred outdoor or ‘plein-air’ studio of the Impressionists. Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Boudin, Morisot, Caillebotte, Gonzales, and Gauguin would all experiment with their art here in a constant quest for originality and innovation.

The aim of this exhibition is to evoke the decisive role played by Normandy in the emergence of the Impressionist movement, through exchanges between French and British landscape painters, the development of a school of nature and the encounters between artists at Saint-Siméon. From a historical to a geographic approach, the exhibition then shows how the Normandy landscape, especially the quality of its light, were critical in the attraction that the region had on the Great Impressionist Masters

For a long time, the history of Impressionism has been understood as having a relatively short chronology, beginning in 1863 with the Salon des Refusés and ending in 1886 with the 8thExposition Impressioniste. This approach assigned a crucial role to Paris and the Île-de-France region but very little to other areas of France and to foreign influences.

Research carried out over the past thirty or so years has led us to reconsider the history of the movement and to situate it within a longer time frame which puts the origins or roots of Impressionism at the beginning of the 1820s. This new approach also underlines the influence of the English School in the birth of a French Landscape School and assigns Normandy a decisive role in the emergence of the Impressionist movement.

Several factors may explain why Normandy was the birthplace of Impressionism 

• its geographical location, half-way between London and Paris, the two artistic epicentres of the time 



(Courbet, L’Embouchure de la Seine also known as Vue prise des hauteurs de Honfleur, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille).

• the region’s rich architectural heritage at a time when artists played an active role in its preservation and promotion 


(Corot, Jumièges, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton) ; 

in 1820 Isidore Taylor published his Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France, with the first two volumes devoted to Normandy. In 1825, Victor Hugo published an essay on the preservation of French patrimonial monuments entitled Guerre aux démolisseurs.

• the fashion for sea-bathing, imported from England, which became popular in Dieppe circa 1820, before spreading along the Channel coastline.

• the beauty and diversity of the region’s landscapes, as well as the subtlety and versatility of the light, in an era when landscape painting became a genre in its own right and when painters began to leave their studios to paint nature as they saw it, outdoors and in natural light.

(Monet, La Charrette. Route sous la neige à Honfleur avec la ferme Saint-Siméon, Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

• ease of access by river and later by train. Railway lines between Paris and the Normandy coast were amongst the first to be created, facilitating the growing popularity of seaside resorts.


 William Turner (1775-1851) Lillebonne, 1823 Watercolour, gouache, brown and black ink13,4 x 18,5 cm Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum. Presented by John Ruskin, 1861© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford


The Open-Air Studio The Impressionists in Normandy

The coastline was traditionally the preserve or domain of fishermen. This was where they unloaded their cargo or mended their nets, or where their wives would wash laundry or collect shellfish.



(Boudin, Marée basse à Trouville, pêcheurs de crevettes, Association Peindre en Normandie, Caen).

With the fashion for sea-bathing, the coastline was transformed into a beach, a place now shared between the workers of the sea and summer holidaymakers at seaside resorts.



(Monet, Sur les planches de Trouville, hôtel des Roches noires, collection particulière). 

On the one hand, there existed a working class that was increasingly sidelined, and on the other hand, an aristocracy and upper middle class who came to the Normandy coast to take advantage of the fresh air and sea-bathing, with a social life akin to the capital’s. Hence the creation of promenades (the famous wooden boardwalks in Trouville and Deauville); race tracks 



(Degas, Course de gentlemen. Avant le départ, Musée d’Orsay, Paris); 

bandstands where concerts were held; casinos for betting, and attending operettas or plays. Soon tennis clubs based on the English model would open up all along the coast. All of these venues were places of conviviality and a means of social segregation.

Under the Second Empire (1852 – 1870), a period of industrialization during which many families amassed large fortunes, the concept of summer holidays became hugely popular. New seaside resorts sprung up all along the Flower Coast (Côte Fleurie) between Deauville and Cabourg. The emergence of a ‘lifestyle of leisure’ chronicled by the painters of the time was a godsend to many artists who had previously struggled to sell their ‘seascapes’ and who could now command high prices for their ‘beach scenes’. This genre, invented by Eugène Boudin in 1862 would be imitated by all of his Impressionist friends 




(Boudin, Crinolines à Trouville, collection particulière).



Claude Monet(1840-1926) Sur les planches de Trouville, hôtel des Roches noires, détail 1870 50 x 70 cm, oil on canvas Collection particulière © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images

Rooms 2 & 3

Beaches, leisure and society life


The coastline of the English Channel, with its tumultuous tides and impressive storms, had long inspired a romantic vision of the sea, as skilfully depicted in the work of both Eugène Isabey and William Turner. However as seaside resorts grew, painters devoted themselves to a new vision of their marine environment. They became less interested in the sea itself and more in its natural and human environment 



(Pissarro, Avant-port de Dieppe, après-midi, soleil, Château-Musée de Dieppe). 

With its ports teeming with boats, stretching from Tréport to the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, and its sheer cliffs, where the whiteness of the chalk contrasted with the verdant grass covering, the Channel coastline offered an infinite variety of subjects and motifs to be painted 



Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) Le Port de Dieppe, around 1885 60,2 x 72,3 cm, oil on canvas Manchester, Royaume-Uni, Manchester City Galleries© Manchester Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman Images

(Gauguin,Le Port de Dieppe, Manchester City Galleries).

Dieppe, which was the first seaside resort to be created in the 1820s, attracted many of the leading figures of this new style of painting (Monet, Renoir, Degas, Boudin, Pissarro and Gauguin) following the War of 1870, as well as artists Blanche, Gervex and Helleu, referred to as ‘society painters’ (one should of course pay little heed to such artificial classifications). It also attracted other unclassifiable artists like Eva Gonzalès, Manet’s only student and last but not least, a large number of Anglo-Saxon artists

room 4

From ports to cliffs – Dieppe

For artists in search of subject matter to paint, Normandy’s Alabaster Coast provided plenty of examples of stunning natural architecture: immense panoramas, a rugged coastline of estuaries and valleys, and huge white chalk cliffs, eroded by the sea and the wind. Maupassant would compare the natural cliff arches of Manneport d’Étretat to an ‘enormous cave through which a ship with all its sails unfurled could pass’ and the Porte d’Amont to ‘the huge figure of an elephant’s trunk plunged into the waves’.But above all what Courbet, Monet, Renoir and Berthe Morisot sought in this section of the coast were the incredible chromatic variations of the sea and the sky, connected to the ebb and flow of the tides, the passing wind and the clouds, and the sea spray. These continuous atmospheric changes were for them a powerful stimulus to work quickly, without getting too bogged down in detail, so as to be able to render the smallest nuances in the light 



(Monet, Falaises à Varengeville also known as Petit-Ailly, Varengeville, plein soleil, Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre).

The central place given to the treatment of the light would bring Courbet, in 1869, to experiment with the process of making series of paintings, depicting for example the cliffs at Étretat in different light 



(Courbet, La Falaise d’Étretat, Van der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal). 

In the 1880s and 1890s, Monet would also use this process, painting numerous depictions of cliffs, from those at Petites-Dalles in Fécamp to ones at Étretat, Varengeville, Porville and Dieppe 



Claude Monet Etretat, la porte d’Aval, bateaux de pêche sortant du port, around1885 60 x 80 cm, oil on canvas Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts© Musée des beaux-arts de Dijon Photo François Jay

room 5

From ports to cliffs - The Alabaster Coast


Towards the middle of the century a new means of transport appeared: the train, which would completely revolutionize travel. Railway lines between Paris and the Normandy coast were amongst the first to be created. The Paris-Rouen line was opened in 1843, extended to Le Havre in 1847, to Dieppe the following year, and in 1856 to Fécamp. In the 1860s, trains stopped at Deauville-Trouville and all the other seaside resorts along the Flower Coast. In their advertising campaigns, railroad companies highlighted the fact that travellers could reach the coast in two to three hours. There were even special trains running for certain events, such as the naval battles of the American Civil War fought off the coast of Cherbourg, attended by Manet in 1864.The train was not only used by Parisian artists (Morisot, Degas, Manet, Caillebotte, etc.) seeking to leave the capital and to soak up the fresh sea air at the coast in their quest for new subject matter to paint. It was also used by painters from Normandy (Boudin, Monet, Dubourg, Lépine, Lebourg, etc.) who travelled to Paris to exhibit their work at the Salon, visiting exhibitions, meeting with fellow artists, as well as art dealers and collectors during their stay.


Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) La Plage des Petites-Dalles, around 1873 24,1 x 50,2 cm, oil on canvas Richmond, Virginie, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts/Katherine Wetzel

room 6

The railroad


Claude Monet(1840-1926) Barques de pêche, Honfleur, around 1866 46 x 55 cm, oil on canvas Collection particulière© Collection particulière


Like the Alabaster Coast, the ports and coastline stretching from Le Havre to Cherbourg would equally captivate Boudin, Monet and Pissarro, as well as Berthe Morisot, Degas, Signac, Seurat and many other landscape artists. Amongst them, was a practically unknown painter: Charles Pécrus, converted by his friend Boudin to the art of landscape painting and whose very lively port scenes would owe a lot to Boudin’s influence (Pécrus, Le Port de Honfleur, Association Peindre en Normandie, Caen).Towards the end of his life, Boudin would adopt an even brighter palette and an even bolder and freer brushstroke. Pursuing his passionate quest for light, he would focus on the shimmering reflections of the water, the vibrations of the air, and the clouds as they raced across an enormous sky  (Entrée du port du Havre par grand vent, Collection particulière, Courtesy Galerie de la Présidence, Paris).

This sensitive, delicate art is completely removed from the vigorous representations—heralding the Expressionist and Fauvist movements—which Monet, at the beginning of his career, would produce of fishing boats moored in the port of Honfleur (Barques de pêche, collection particulière, et Bateaux de pêche, Muzeul National de Arta al României, Bucarest). 

To capture the comings and goings of the boats and the strollers, Pissarro and Berthe Morisot preferred to make use of slightly plunging perspectives, from an elevated viewing point. Berthe was especially interested in the effects of perspective, which she skilfully mastered (L’Entrée du port de Cherbourg, Yale University Art Gallery), while Pissarro attempted to capture the passage of time and atmospheric variations, delivering a superb series of port views of Le Havre which form part of his artistic legacy (L’Anse des Pilotes et le briselames est, Le Havre, après-midi, temps ensoleillé, Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre).

room 7

From ports to cliffs - From Le Havre to Cherbourg

If throughout the course of the 19thcentury, Rouen attracted so many landscape painters from Turner, Boninton and Corot to Monet and Pissarro, it was because of the town’s remarkable architectural heritage. Rouen was celebrated by Victor Hugo as the ‘city of a hundred bell towers’ and was immortalized by Monet (La Rue de l’Épicerie à Rouen, Collection particulière, courtesy of the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny). The destination was made even more attractive due to its topography, which Flaubert compared to an amphitheatre. Nestled between the river and the surrounding hills, the town not only offered ‘the most splendid landscape that a painter could ever dream of’ (Pissarro) but above all, the effects of fog and rain and the constant atmospheric variations proved to be a source of great pleasure to all those in search of the ephemeral. The liveliness of the port and its industrial landscape, where the tall factory chimneys on the left bank echoed the bell towers on the right bank, would draw Pissarro to make this enthusiastic comparison: ‘It’s as beautiful as Venice’ (Le Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, effet de pluie, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, room 7). Many of the Impressionist masters (Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Gauguin) would stay in Rouen. This, coupled with the presence of several important collectors (François Depeaux, Léon Monet, Eugène Murer) would favour the birth of a Rouen School to cite the expression of art critic, Arsène Alexandre. Monet in Giverny Claude Monet lived for 43 years in his house in Giverny from 1883 to 1926. Passionate about gardening, he designed his gardens as veritable paintings. In 1893, he put in a pond which he had covered with lily pads and created a Japanese-style garden ‘for the pleasure of the eye but also with the intention of providing subject matter for painting’. Until his death, his garden proved to be his most fertile source of inspiration. Indeed, he once said : ‘My most beautiful masterpiece is my garden’.

Monet began painting waterlilies in 1895 and his Japanese bridge would be the object of some fifty canvases. Taking out the horizon and the sky, he narrowed his focus on the bridge, the water and the reflections. From 1918 onwards, the pictorial elements or details would give way to an explosion of colours, with the density of the brushstrokes bordering on abstraction. The water and the sky seem to merge and under these fireworks of colour, the bridge appears little by little, providing a landmark or a point of reference to the composition.

As Daniel Wildenstein, author of the catalogue raisonné of the artist, would say, the exceptional series of the Pont japonaisrepresents the culmination of Monet’s oeuvre where the vibration of the colour is enough to evoke a world of sensation and powerful emotion

Room 8

Along the Seine, from Rouen to Giverny

If throughout the course of the 19th century, Rouen attracted so many landscape painters from Turner, Boninton and Corot to Monet and Pissarro, it was because of the town’s remarkable architectural heritage. Rouen was celebrated by Victor Hugo as the ‘city of a hundred bell towers’ and was immortalized by Monet (La Rue de l’Épicerie à Rouen, Collection particulière, courtesy of the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny). The destination was made even more attractive due to its topography, which Flaubert compared to an amphitheatre. Nestled between the river and the surrounding hills, the town not only offered ‘the most splendid landscape that a painter could ever dream of’ (Pissarro) but above all, the effects of fog and rain and the constant atmospheric variations proved to be a source of great pleasure to all those in search of the ephemeral. The liveliness of the port and its industrial landscape, where the tall factory chimneys on the left bank echoed the bell towers on the right bank, would draw Pissarro to make this enthusiastic comparison: ‘It’s as beautiful as Venice’ (Le Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, effet de pluie, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, room 7). Many of the Impressionist masters (Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Gauguin) would stay in Rouen. This, coupled with the presence of several important collectors (François Depeaux, Léon Monet, Eugène Murer) would favour the birth of a Rouen School to cite the expression of art critic, Arsène Alexandre. 

Monet in Giverny 

Claude Monet lived for 43 years in his house in Giverny from 1883 to 1926. Passionate about gardening, he designed his gardens as veritable paintings. In 1893, he put in a pond that he had covered with lily pads and created a Japanese-style garden ‘for the pleasure of the eye but also with the intention of providing subject matter for painting’. Until his death, his garden proved to be his most fertile source of inspiration. Indeed, he once said: ‘My most beautiful masterpiece is my garden’. Monet began painting waterlilies in 1895 and his Japanese bridge would be the object of some fifty canvases. Taking out the horizon and the sky, he narrowed his focus on the bridge, the water and the reflections. From 1918 onwards, the pictorial elements or details would give way to an explosion of colours, with the density of the brushstrokes bordering on abstraction. The water and the sky seem to merge and under these fireworks of colour, the bridge appears little by little, providing a landmark or a point of reference to the composition.

As Daniel Wildenstein, author of the catalogue raisonné of the artist, would say, the exceptional series of the Pont japonais represents the culmination of Monet’s oeuvre where the vibration of the colour is enough to evoke a world of sensation and powerful emotion (Pont japonais, Collection Larock-Granoff, Paris).


Louis Anquetin (1861-1932) La Seine près de Rouen, 1892 79 x 69 cm, oil on canvas Collection particulière© Collection particulière / Tom Haartsen




Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) Le Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, effet de pluie,1896 73 x 92 cm, oil on canvasKarlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle© BPK, Berlin, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Image Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

COMPLETE CREDITS

RENOIR Pierre-Auguste  (1841-1919)  La Côte près de Dieppe - 1879 - Oil on canvas - 49,5 x 60,6 cm Montclair, New Jersey, Kasser Mochary Foundation © Photo Tim Fuller © Kasser Mochary Foundation, Montclair, NJ 

 CAILLEBOTTE Gustave  (1848-1894)  Régates en mer à Trouville - 1884 - 60,3 x 73 cm - Oil on canvas - Toledo, Ohio. Lent by the Toledo  Museum of Art. Gift of The Wildenstein Foundation © Photograph Incorporated, Toledo 

MONET Claude (1840-1926)  Etretat, la porte d’Aval, bateaux de pêche sortant du port -  around 1885 - Oil on canvas - 60 x 80 cm - Dijon,  Musée des Beaux-Arts © Musée des beaux-arts de Dijon. Photo François Jay 

RENOIR Pierre-Auguste  (1841-1919)  La Cueillette des moules - 1879 - Oil on canvas - 54,2 x 65,4 cm - Washington D.C., National Gallery  of Art. Gift of Margaret Seligman Lewisohn in memory of her husband, Sam A. Lewisohn © Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

GAUGUIN Paul  (1848-1903) Le Port de Dieppe - around 1885 - Oil on canvas - 60,2 x 72,3 cm - Manchester, Royaume-Uni, Manchester  City Galleries © Manchester Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman Images


 SIGNAC Paul  (1863-1935)  Port-en-Bessin. Le Catel - around 1884 - Oil on canvas - 45 x 65 - Collection particulière © Collection particulière 

 CALS Félix  (1810-1880)  Honfleur, Saint-Siméon -1879 - Oil on canvas - 35 x 54 cm - Caen, Association Peindre en Normandie  © Association Peindre en Normandie

BOUDIN Eugène-Louis  (1824-1898)  Scène de plage à Trouville  - 1869 - 28 x 40 cm - Oil on panel - Collection particulière. Courtesy Galerie  de la Présidence, Paris © Galerie de la Présidence, Paris 

MONET Claude (1840-1926)  Camille sur la plage à Trouville  - 1870 - Oil on canvas - 38,1 x 46,4 cm - New Haven, Yale University Art  Gallery, Collection of Mr. and Mrs John Hay Whitney, B.A. 1926, Hon. 1956 © Photo courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery 



PISSARRO Camille  (1830-1903)  Avant-port de Dieppe, après-midi, soleil - 1902 - Oil on canvas - 53,5 x 65 cm Dieppe, Château-Musée © Ville de Dieppe - B. Legros 

MONET Claude  (1840-1926) L’Église de Varengeville à contre-jour - 1882 - Oil on canvas - 65 x 81,3 cm - Birmingham, The Henry  Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham © The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham 

BONINGTON Richard Parkes (1802-1828) Plage de sable en Normandie - around 1825-1826 - Oil on canvas - 38,7 × 54 cm - Trustees  of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery Bedford (The Higgins Bedford) © Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford  

  MONET Claude (1840-1926)  Falaises à Varengeville  also known as  Petit-Ailly, Varengeville, plein soleil  - 1897 - Oil on canvas - 64 x 91,5  cm - Le Havre, Musée d’art moderne André Malraux © MuMa Le Havre / Charles Maslard 2016 

BOUDIN Eugène-Louis (1824-1898)  Entrée du port du Havre par grand vent - 1889 - Oil on canvas - 46 x 55 cm - Collection particulière.  Courtesy Galerie de la Présidence, Paris © Galerie de la Présidence 

COURBET Gustave ( 1819-1877)  La Plage à Trouville - around 1865 - Oil on canvas - 34 x 41 cm - Caen, Association Peindre en  Normandie © Association Peindre en Normandie 

MONET Claude  (1840-1926)  La Rue de l’Épicerie à Rouen  - around 1892 - Oil on canvas - 93 x 53 cm - Collection particulière. Courtesy  Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny (Suisse) © Claude Mercier photographe 

ANQUETIN Louis (1861-1932)  La Seine près de Rouen - 1892 - Oil on canvas - 79 x 69 cm - Collection particulière © Collection  particulière / Tom Haartsen

MORISOT Berthe  (1841-1895) La Plage des Petites-Dalles -  around 1873 - Oil on canvas - 24,1 x 50,2 cm Richmond, Virginie, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Collection