Those unable to visit Monet's Melbourne exhibition can see some of his major paintings in Wellington, plus work by French artists Cezanne, Rodin, Pissarro, Signac and Renoir, and Americans Homer, Cassatt and Whistler.
Colour & Light: Impressionism from France & America
From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Te Papa
Until January 12
Those unable to visit Melbourne for the Monet exhibition can see some of his major paintings at Te Papa’s latest exhibition, Colour & Light: Impressionism from France & America.
On display also are works by French artists Cezanne, Rodin, Pissarro, Signac and Renoir, as well as Americans Homer, Cassatt and Whistler.
The exhibition shows how ideas and the practice of art passed from Europe to America and mirrors the same as happened between the antipodes and Europe with artists such as Frances Hodgkins.
Australian Impressionists in France (until October) explores this connection at the Ian Potter Centre in Melbourne.
The Te Papa exhibition is essentially two shows in one. More than half the works are by the major French Impressionists and are a fantastic group by themselves. Having the US artists in the show allows us to see how others have responded to the European works.
This gives a greater insight into what the Impressionists were trying to do, although it does not explain why the American artists or our own were not able to respond with the same visual aesthetic.
This phenomenon plays out a few decades later with the growth of Cubism, where other artists created a pastiche of the genre which misunderstood the ideas and intentions of the first Cubists.
At the end of the 19th century, American artists flocked to Paris, then regarded as the world’s capital of culture, and while they initially rejected Impressionism by the end of the century they were more accepting of it as a style.
More importantly, it was the patrons who began collecting Impressionist art that gave impetus to young artists to adopt the new styles of European painting.
Superficial aspects
Some artists adopted only the superficial aspects in response the desires of collectors but many of them shared the ideas of the French Impressionists' conviction about showing scenes from modern life rather than history and mythology.
These works show how they responded to light, colour and drama of urban life, as well as a less romantic view of the rural landscape, responding to the fragmented experience that marked the age in rapidly rendered vignettes.
William James Glacken, for example, caught the flavour of characteristic neighbourhoods in New York in works such as Italo – American celebrations Washington Square. With the triumphal arch in the background, the work composed of flickering touches of colour could be mistaken for a view of the Champs Elysee.
There are four Monet works at the exhibition.
There is one of the bridge in the garden at Giverney, where the focus is on trees and water, the horizontal and vertical sweeps of colour and light, with no sky filling the canvas.
Two of the works are of the village of Vetheuil, where Monet spent much time recording the seasonal changes. In Village Vetheuil, he records a winter scene where the figures are almost swallowed up by the snow in a portrait of white and light. Then there is a summer view with the flowers depicted as bursts of colour across the canvas.
There is one of his views of the South of France with his Cap Martin capturing the bright light and intense colours of the big hills and coast.
There is also a Cezanne self-portrait, his face consisting of sharp features, constructed of painterly sections like his paintings of Mt St Victoire.
Shows influence
Girl seated by the Sea (1893) by the American Robert Earle Henri shows Monet’s influence on both the subject matter and the technique, while the high-angled view of a rocky shore by Leslie Prince Thompson owes much to Monet’s similar views.
One of the earliest of the American paintings in the show is by William Morris Hunt (brother of the major American architect) whose work shows the influence of the pre-Impressionist such as Millet.
There is a strange little painting by William Merill Chase, Gray Day on the Lagoon, which is a view of Venice, but this is no tourist's view as it is dominated by the dark shapes of ships and the only acknowledgement of the city is the distant dome of Salute.
Another oddity is the small painting by John George Brown, Reading on the Rocks, Grand Manan. It has been given the false signature of “Winslow Homer”, an artist from who Brown probably derived more of his knowledge of painting than the Impressionists.
It is an example of the way that other artist captured light and colour within the structures of figures and landscapes rather then dissolving the edges into light.
There are a couple of examples where works have been paired to show the difference in approach to subject matter. Renoir’s Children at the Seashore (1883) is paired with Frank Weston Benson’s Calm Morning (1904). Both show children at play and both investigate light and colour.
Benson's work takes on a more sculptural form, with colours played off against each other, while Renoir’s colours and forms are more ethereal.
The exhibition also features works in bronze by Rodin and Degas, and portraits of writers and artists by their peers.
A particular feature of the exhibition is the inclusion of 17 works on paper, which provide often intimate glimpses of the artists’ worlds.
They include a charming lithograph of Renoir’s son Claude, or Coco, a brooding black and white lithograph by Fantin-Latour and a poignant print of a mother and child by Mary Cassatt, the only American to be accepted as one of the exhibiting French impressionists.
# Image credit:
Claude Monet, The Water Lilypond, 1900, oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Given in memory of Governor Alvan T Fuller by the Fuller Foundation. Photograph © MFA, Boston
