June 29–August 31, 2025
In summer 2025, the Barnes Foundation will present From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes, an exhibition featuring more than 50 iconic paintings from the first floor of the collection galleries by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and other European artists. Curated by Cindy Kang, this exhibition reflects the expansion of the Barnes’s educational program, emphasizing the historical and cultural context of the works. On view in the Roberts Gallery from June 29 through August 31, 2025, From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal.
Charting a journey through France, this exhibition examines how place informed the work of modern painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition begins in Paris and its suburbs, dynamic places that were at once semi-industrial, as in Van Gogh’s The Factory, and sites of blooming suburban leisure, as in Monet’s Madame Monet Embroidering. Life in and around Paris and the coastal regions of Normandy and Brittany inspired the radical brushwork, light palette, and contemporary subject matter of impressionists like Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, their mentor and friend Édouard Manet, and the post-impressionists. Several of these painters subsequently moved to the South of France, seeking the warmer climate and dazzling sunlight that intensified their colors.
From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes highlights Van Gogh’s time in Arles and Saint-Rémy—uniting, for the first time, several Van Gogh paintings from the Barnes collection on one wall—as well as Cézanne’s deep connection to his native Provence, with nearly 20 works depicting scenes from the countryside and his family home, the Jas de Bouffan. Finally, the exhibition returns to Paris to explore a new generation of painters who flocked there from across Europe—Amedeo Modigliani, Chaïm Soutine, Giorgio de Chirico, and Joan Miró—and reaffirmed the French capital’s place as the center of modern art.
Creating space for new conversations between works—a critical aspect of education, research, and public access—this exhibition will provide visitors a rare opportunity to temporarily experience these paintings in new contexts and juxtapositions. While this exhibition is on view, rooms 2 through 13 of the Barnes collection will be closed for a floor refinishing project. Following the exhibition, the paintings will return to their original locations in the galleries.
“Featuring a wide variety of works from the first-floor galleries, this exhibition emphasizes the historical and cultural context of the paintings and offers the extraordinary opportunity for visitors to encounter beloved French paintings from the Barnes collection in new conversations,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President.
“By seeing these works juxtaposed for the first time, visitors will discover how particular places—with their distinct landscapes, light, and people—shaped the work of each artist,” says Cindy Kang. “I hope this exhibition will inspire audiences to see these well-known paintings in a new light and with a renewed sense of appreciation and level of understanding.”
The exhibition will feature more than 50 major paintings from the first floor of the Barnes collection. Highlights include:
- Édouard Manet, Laundry (1875): In this canvas, a woman washes linen in a flower-filled garden in Paris. A child to her right, as if eager to help, tugs at the pail of suds. Washerwomen were popular figures in 19th-century art and literature. Manet’s good friend Émile Zola, for example, described their tough lives in his novels. But this depiction is idyllic. Flashes of white paint—offset by grays and blues—become sunlight on the drying fabric. After the jury of the French Salon, the annual state art exhibition, rejected this painting, Manet exhibited it independently.
- Claude Monet, The Studio Boat (1876): The figure in the boat is likely the artist, who outfitted this floating studio with all his supplies so that he could paint from the middle of the Seine River. Boating culture in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris, inspired him to have this vessel constructed to his specifications. Often Monet would anchor his boat when working. But sometimes he painted as he drifted down the river, creating landscapes that are more a collection of momentary glimpses rather than a depiction of one specific spot.
Vincent van Gogh, The Postman (Joseph Étienne-Roulin) (1889): Van Gogh probably met Joseph Étienne-Roulin, a postman at the Arles train station in the South of France, when the artist rented a room above the nearby Café de la Gare. The two shared similar left-leaning political views and became close friends; in fact, it was Roulin who cared for Van Gogh during his hospital stay in nearby Saint-Rémy. Van Gogh painted six portraits of Roulin between 1888 and 1889 as well as several of Roulin’s wife and children.
- Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire (1892–95): Mont Sainte-Victoire, which towers over the Aix-en-Provence region of southern France, was one of Cézanne’s favorite motifs. He spent his childhood exploring its terrain, and he painted it several dozen times from different vantage points. The mountain also held symbolic meaning to the artist, representing the ancient countryside during a moment of rapid industrialization and modernization. On the right side of the canvas, one can just make out an ancient Roman aqueduct.
- Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait of the Red-Headed Woman (1918): Modigliani’s portrait of a woman who was part of his international, bohemian circles in Paris suggests how women’s lives had changed by the early 20th century. With her vivid hair and strapless dress, she drapes her shoulder over the chair and addresses the viewer with an unapologetic gaze. Her revealing dress shows how bold new fashions could represent a form of freedom. Modigliani used a thick round brush to describe the model’s flesh, and the textured surface seems to invite touch.
