From 11 March to 28 June 2015, Frankfurt’s Städel Museum is presenting a major exhibition
on “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism”.
One hundred masterworks from
the world’s most prominent painting collections will shed light on the
beginnings of the Impressionist movement in the years from the early
1860s to 1880. World-famous loans will be on view, for example
Monet’s
La Grenouillère (1869) from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art,
his
Boulevard des Capucines (1873) from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,
and
The Luncheon: decorative panel (ca. 1873)
and
Camille on Her Deathbed
(1879),
both from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
The exhibition, which
will be one of the highlights of the ¨200 Years Städel¨ anniversary
programme, inquires into how Impressionism came about and the extent to
which this approach to painting manifests contemporary visual
experience. In addition to some fifty paintings by Claude Monet, works
by numerous other Impressionists will also be on display, including
important examples by Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot,
Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley. The anniversary exhibition bears a
direct connection to the history of the Städel Museum’s own holdings: as
early as the beginning of the twentieth century, then director Georg
Swarzenski (1876–1957) came out passionately in favour of acquiring
French painting ‒ which now represents one of the chief focuses of the
museum’s collection.
In conjunction with the show,
a catalogue is being published by
Prestel Verlag in German and English. In addition to numerous essays, it
will present the results of in-depth technological examinations of all
the Impressionist works in the Städel holdings, carried out in
preparation for the exhibition. An audio guide of the show recorded by
actress Diane Kruger will also be available. The free
Digitorial moreover offers interested visitors a means of acquainting themselves
with the exhibition contents before coming to the museum
(monet.staedelmuseum.de).
“Works from the early days of Impressionism are rare and precious.
All the more delighted are we that we have been able to realize such a
complex and spectacular special exhibition as a prelude to our
anniversary year, and have the opportunity to present loans from all
over the world side by side with central works from the Städel
collection. The exhibition and research project will undoubtedly be yet
another highlight in the Städel’s two-hundred-year history”, comments
Max Hollein, the director of the Städel Museum.
Taking as its point of departure Claude Monet’s painting
The Luncheon
(1868/69) ‒ a key work of early Impressionism that the Städel is
fortunate enough to have in its holdings ‒ and the museum’s superb
collection of early Impressionist works by Auguste Renoir, Édouard
Manet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Paul Cézanne, the exhibition will
show how the Impressionists found their way to the dissolution and
dematerialization of their pictorial motifs. From a multifaceted
perspective, the visitors will learn about the various conditions that
led to the birth of Impressionism and the radical change that came about
in the relationship between pictorial content and form in the paintings
produced by this important movement. Impressionism challenged the
visual habits of the time in a completely new way ‒ and met with a wide
variety of responses, as is evidenced by contemporary caricatures to be
presented alongside works of Impressionist painting and photography.
“Our show revolves around the beginnings of the Impressionist
movement. The Städel collection provides a foundation upon which we can
ask how it was possible for Impressionism to emerge within just a few
years. This exhibition focuses on the development of Impressionism from
its inception to 1880”, remarks curator Felix Krämer, the head of the
collection of modern art at the Städel Museum.
The nineteenth century was a time of upheavals and a wide variety of
developments all taking place at the same time ‒ developments that also
left their mark on the paintings of the Impressionists. Increasing
industrialization brought about a change in the relationship between man
and nature, but also that between work and leisure time. Technical
progress led to a general acceleration of life. The visual experience of
the big city and the spread of new media such as photography also had a
decisive impact on the works of the period’s artists. The main
protagonist and continual point of reference in the exhibition is Claude
Monet. Among the artists of his time, Monet played a pioneering role in
the growing popularity of open-air painting. In his œuvre, the formal
innovations of Impressionism ‒ the clearly recognizable brushstroke and
the rapid, sketchy painting style ‒ are particularly prominent. And his
work also exemplifies another phenomenon that applies to the art of the
Impressionists in general: they increasingly abandoned large-scale
figural compositions in favour of smaller landscape scenes.
A circular tour of the exhibition
Part I of the exhibition
Arranged in chronological order, the presentation spreads out on both
floors of the exhibition annex. A prologue in the first room on the
ground floor is dedicated to the artists whom the Impressionists looked
to as examples, such as the representatives of the “School of Barbizon”
in whose work the predilection for landscape scenes, the tendency
towards a sketchy manner of painting and the departure from academic
tradition are all manifest. Here key compositions by Camille Corot,
Jean-François Millet, Gustave Courbet, Charles-François Daubigny, Eugène
Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind are on view.
After the prologue, the first main section of the show retraces the
development of early Impressionist art in the period from 1864 to
approximately 1870/71. It begins with a selection of paintings executed
in the Forest of Fontainebleau. This is where the members of the
“Barbizon School” worked on their open-air studies. Following in the
footsteps of the painters they admired, Monet and his artist friends
Frédéric Bazille, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley also visited the
Fontainebleau woods to paint. This section of the show is flanked by a
photo gallery devoted to the theme of nature in the photography of the
period, and shedding light on the concurrence of painting and
photography activities in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris transformed from a
city still shaped by medieval structures to a modern metropolis
characterized by large squares and wide boulevards and considered very
progressive. Monet also devoted himself to the motif of the public urban
space in these years. His first endeavours to come to terms with the
theme of the city are already perceivable in the following room of the
show. Here the significance of Édouard Manet for Monet also becomes
evident. At the time, Manet was regarded as the major talent of the
avant-garde, and younger artists looked to him for orientation.
The
exhibition features Manet’s large-scale painting
The Universal Exhibition of Paris 1867 (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo). Yet Monet was also concerned with depicting the urban realm:
The Quai du Louvre
of 1867 (Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) shows the view from the balcony of
the famous museum: it was not the Old Masters in the Louvre galleries
that interested him, but the view of the everyday present outside. At
the same time, he and his colleagues continued to paint landscapes and
seascapes, several of which are likewise on view in this room.
The rear section of the ground floor concentrates on the years from 1868
to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. The key work here is the
painting
The Luncheon (1868/69) belonging to the Städel (above). The
depiction of the home of a couple without a marriage licence and with an
illegitimate child was a deliberate provocation and a critique on
prevailing conventions. It was moreover the first time an artist had
represented a private interior on such a large scale. Measuring 2.31 x
1.51 metres, the work was refused by the Salon jury, as was the
depiction of
La Grenouillère (1869) Monet had likewise
submitted.
This rejection led to the artist’s break with the Paris Salon
and a radical reorientation in his art:
The Luncheon is the
last of his large-scale figural paintings and marks his departure from
Manet as an artistic reference. The fact that Monet presented this
painting at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, when it was
already five years old, testifies to the significance it nevertheless
held for him. It was the largest work in the 1874 show. Scenes of the
Franco-Prussian War are not to be found in the Impressionist paintings
of this period. Most of the works were executed in exile, among them
Monet’s Dutch landscape views. This section is enhanced by a photo
gallery shedding light on the discrepancy between the political
situation and the cheerful Impressionist pictorial motifs of these
years.
Part II of the exhibition
The second part of the exhibition follows the further development of
Monet’s œuvre and those of other Impressionists from 1872 to 1880 ‒ i.e.
to the phase in which the subordination of the pictorial subject to
atmospheric phenomena reached a climax. Upon entering the suite of
galleries on the upper level, the beholder encounters another Monet
painting:
The Luncheon: Decorative Panel (above) dating from 1873 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), with which the artist reacted to his Frankfurt
Luncheon.
The work aptly demonstrates the shift of interest that had come about
in his art: the focus was no longer on the human being and the interior
but on nature and atmosphere. The dark shades of the predecessor
painting make way for flickering dabs of paint applied to the canvas
unmixed. Monet now concentrated primarily on reproducing light and
colour and conveying a certain mood. In these paintings the visitor
witnesses the increasing dissolution of form that took place in this
phase of Impressionism. Monet presented this work along with the
depiction of
La Grenouillère at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876.
The painting
The Boulevard des Capucines of 1873 (Nelson-Atkins
Museum, Kansas City) (above) on display in this room is representative of
Monet’s depictions of Paris. The pedestrians on the street have been
recorded sketchily, with rapid brushstrokes, as an anonymous mass. Here
the artist has masterfully captured the constant state of unrest and
motion in the city with painterly means, and it is a work that already
met with great admiration in his lifetime. The subsequent section of the
show features landscape depictions and leisure-time scenes of the years
1873 to 1878, works that address man’s changing relationship to nature.
As illustrated, for example, by Monet’s painting
Summer of
1874 (Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), the great
outdoors gained importance in this period as a place of recreation and
recuperation for the modern city dweller. In the main room on this
floor, the focus is on the Parisian metropolis and motifs of urban life
as depicted in paintings by Degas, Morisot, Renoir and others. In
Monet’s railway station scenes the increasing dissolution of the scenery
brought about by the sketchy, diffuse application of the paint is
clearly evident.
Claude Monet (1840–1926), Exterior of Saint-Lazare Station (The Signal), 1877
At the centre of his 1877 work
Exterior of Saint-Lazare Station (The Signal)
of 1877 (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover), a large traffic
signal blocks the view. The grounds of the railway behind it are
blurred, and reminiscent of a landscape seen from a train window during
fast travel on what was then a brand new means of transport. The steam
of the engine also prevents us from taking in the entire scene.
Obstructions to sight have thus been elevated to the status of pictorial
motifs as the actual subject recedes ever further into the background.
At the same time, the artist has assigned special importance to
atmospheric qualities. This section is accompanied by a gallery
showcasing contemporary caricatures on Impressionism. In the last room
on the upper level, we see how the phenomenon of the pictorial subject’s
disintegration has been taken to the farthest extreme and the intrinsic
value of colour has come to the fore, for example in Monet’s painting
Vétheuil in the Fog of 1879 (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris).
Finally, an “epilogue” assembles a number of characteristic works of
Monet’s late phase that serve as particularly good illustrations of the
development to the nearly complete loss of the pictorial subject.
Claude Monet (1840–1926), Rouen Cathedral: The Portal, Morning Effect, 1893-1894
In the
four paintings from the
Rouen Cathedral series (Fondation
Beyeler, Riehen/Basel; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Klassik Stiftung Weimar;
private collection) executed in 1892‒94 and depictions of London bridges
likewise dating from this period (Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Indianapolis Museum of Art, private collection), no more than an inkling
of the built structures has remained; they appear almost entirely
immaterial. Instead, the representation of light and atmosphere
dominates the compositions.
More works from the exhibition:
