Displaying items by tag: French Impressionism

  For two decades, Henry W. Bloch, co-founder of H&R Block, and his wife Marion, collected what they described as "pretty pictures" — mostly French Impressionist works by the likes of Degas, Matisse, and Monet. Nearly 30 of these paintings filled the walls of their Mission Hills, Kansas home.

Although these masterworks are not there now — you wouldn't know it by looking.

Flash on French Impressionism and you’re likely to see gauzy noon landscapes, or a steam-choked Gare Saint-Lazare, or just clouds of flickering paint strokes like molecules flying apart. Yet if you visited the Impressionist show in Paris in 1877, you would have found a few things that countered such expectations: realistic paintings of a new Paris of luxury high-rises as blank as mausoleums and of ruler-straight boulevards running back into infinite space.

The name of the artist attached to these pictures, Gustave Caillebotte, was one you might even have heard of at the time. He had already made a splash in the previous year’s exhibition.

The "Monet and American Impressionism" exhibit opened at the Hunter Museum on Friday and will run through Sept. 20. 

"Monet and American Impressionism" will feature several Monet paintings and highlight American artists who launched a new way of painting in response to the influence of French  Impressionism. 

An oil painting thought to have been created by French Impressionist Claude Monet has been proven to be genuine through scientific testing.

"A Haystack in the Evening Sun" had not previously been authenticated because the work is largely unknown and the artist's signature is covered by paint.

However researchers at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland uncovered the signature using a hyperspectral camera.

On September 21, Stanford University will reveal the Anderson Collection, one of the most valuable gifts in its history. Assembled over the course of fifty years by Bay area collectors Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson along with their daughter Mary Patricia Anderson Pence, the collection features 121 works by 86 artists, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Ellsworth Kelly. While Abstract Expressionist works form the collection’s core, the Andersons’ gift also includes a number of works from California art movements such as the Bay Area Figurative School, which started in San Francisco in the 1950s, and the Light and Space movement, which originated in Southern California in the 1960s.

The Andersons began collecting art after their first visit to the Louvre in 1964. Before focusing on works by Abstract Expressionists, Color Field painters, and Pop artists, they acquired a number of works by French Impressionists and American modernists.

For years the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, with its magnificent collection of 19th century art (among other goodies) has felt like a bastion against the world outside its gates, a step back in time to the glories of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and the French Impressionists. (After that it was no Modernists need apply for the ultraconservative Mr. Clark.)

The thoroughly modern new museum isn’t a refutation of the old one, though. The architects don’t drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century, even if not everyone wants to come along. It’s way too Zen for any such temperamental demonstrations.

The Shelburne Museum is expecting a lot of visitors for its new exhibition that features some of the most famous paintings in the world. It's a very rare chance for people to see the paintings from French masters.

Museum staff was putting the finishing touches on a new exhibition that opens to the public Saturday. It is called "In a New Light; French impressionism arrives in America." The centerpiece is Monet's "Le Pont, Amsterdam." It is the very first painting by Monet to become part of an American collection. It was bought from the artist in Paris by Louisine Havemeyer, mother of Shelburne Museum found Electra Havemeyer Webb.

Sotheby’s London today announces that the collection of Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., visionary founder of the Buffalo Bills NFL franchise, who died earlier this year, will lead Sotheby’s Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in London on 23 June 2014. The group of four works, highlighted by two exquisite paintings by Claude Monet that represent the pinnacle of the Impressionist movement, was assembled by Mr Wilson with a remarkable vision over two decades ago. American Football as it is known today would not exist if it weren’t for Mr Ralph Wilson, but while he was best known as the longtime owner of the Buffalo Bills, privately he was a passionate collector of the highest order. Seeking out the finest examples of key artists of the Impressionist era, Wilson pursued great works of art and in the 1990s acquired these four canvases by the towering figures of the period.

Helena Newman, Sotheby’s Co-Head, Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide comments: “We have seen how much appetite there is for works of true museum quality so we anticipate that these two extremely desirable works by Monet will appeal to buyers across the world. Outstanding paintings by Monet are more desirable now than ever before and these two works, each from a pinnacle of the artist’s career in two different decades, are both wonderful examples of why Monet has such an enduring appeal.”

Art collecting has always been an international affair. Works made in one place are often sought after by people living in another.

Many of the greatest American Pop artworks of the 1960s are in German collections. French Impressionism from the end of the 19th century is superbly represented in the United States.

And going back hundreds of years, collections in Japan began to swell with paintings made across the sea in China. A magnificent show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art chronicles the phenomenon.

"Chinese Paintings From Japanese Collections" is something of a coup. It features 35 scrolls, some consisting of multiple panels, from the Tokyo National Museum and other collections in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Japanese museums are often reluctant to allow important works to leave the country, even for temporary exhibitions. But LACMA curator Stephen Little has managed a remarkable group of loans — including some that are just now making their premiere abroad.

“Should you make the purchase, we will have more of the Monets than I think we will care for, but it strikes me we can sell some of those we now have, and thereby greatly improve our collection.” With this, an industrialist from the small town of Naugatuck, Connecticut, advised his twenty-eight-year-old son, honeymooning in Paris in 1893, to buy another Monet.