NGV curators will hold a special guided 3D tour of French impressionist masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on October 3.
The special guided tour will be held live on NGV’s Facebook account on Sunday the 3rd of October at 4PM, and will then be available to watch afterwards on the NGV website.
It’s a special opportunity for the public – most of whom haven’t had a chance to see the NGV’s exhibition – to witness the beauty of impressionist masters Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt and many more before the exhibition’s closing date.
What’s more, you’ll be guided through the free livestreamed exhibition by the NGV’s expert curators, who promise to chart the trajectory of the now famous late-nineteenth century artistic movement, highlighting the key milestones and figures at the centre of this period of experimentation and revolution in modern art.
What you need to know
- The NGV are holding a livestreamed, 3D tour of their French Impressionist exhibition
- It will be the last chance – and for many, the first – to see the exhibition before it closes
- It will be a guided tour held by the art gallery’s expert curators.
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The last chance to witness the exhibition of more than 100 masterworks of French Impressionism includes 79 artworks that have never-before-been exhibited in Australia.
The French impressionist exhibition will chart the trajectory of the late-nineteenth century artistic movement, highlighting the key milestones and figures at the centre of this period of experimentation and revolution in modern art.
Through an arresting display of paintings and works on paper that showcases the breadth of the movement, the exhibition will evoke the artistic energy and intellectual dynamism of the period by placing emphasis on the thoughts and observations of the artists themselves, revealing the social connections, artistic influences and personal relationships that united the group of radical practitioners at the centre of this new art movement.
A thematic journey through French impressionism
Presented thematically across ten sections, the exhibition will open with early works by Monet and his forebears, Eugène Boudin and painters of the Barbizon School, illustrating their profound influence on Monet’s use of the then radical method of painting outdoors en plein air (‘in the open air’) to capture changing conditions in nature.
The growth of the movement in subsequent decades is mapped through an exploration of the favoured subjects and ideas of the Impressionists. Moving through an immersive exhibition design, audiences will experience the hallmarks of Impressionism, including distinctive brushwork, unique points of view, arresting use of colour, as well as places dear to the artists, such as Paris, Fontainebleau Forest, Pontoise, Giverny, the Normandy coast and the South of France. Many artists also placed equal weight on recording movement and change in urban and domestic realms. Still life paintings, intimate interiors and street scenes by such artists as Manet, Renoir and Gustave Caillebotte will also feature.
These broader themes are punctuated by focused sections of the exhibition that examine significant moments and characteristics in the practices of a selection of artists, including Renoir and his experimentation with pictorial effects in the 1880s, as well as Pissarro and his role as mentor to a number of other artists.
An exhibition highlight will be a breathtaking display of sixteen canvases by Claude Monet, arranged in an immersive display reminiscent of the distinctive, oval gallery Monet helped design for his famous Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, between 1922 and his death in 1926. Painted over a thirty-year period, these paintings depict many of Monet’s most beloved scenes of nature in Argenteuil, the Normandy coast, the Mediterranean coast and his extraordinary garden in Giverny. Together, these paintings demonstrate the full scope of the artist’s immeasurable contribution to the Impressionist movement.
Tony Ellwood AM, Director, National Gallery of Victoria said: ‘Paintings by the Impressionists are beloved world-wide for the artistic innovation and visual curiosity they represent, as well as for their breath-taking use of colour.
“This exhibition will give audiences the extraordinary opportunity to study more than 100 masterworks up-close, including Monet’s radiant scenes of the French countryside, and to discover the truly revolutionary origins of this important moment in modern art history. A thematic presentation of this calibre and breadth will not be seen in Australia for many years,’ said Ellwood.
The NGV’s exhibition showcases some of the very best pieces from the over a century-old Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The US’ museum houses a global collection encompassing nearly 500,000 works of art, from ancient to contemporary. For nearly fifty years, the MFA has shared its deep collections and curatorial expertise with audiences around the world through traveling exhibitions.
The tour can be viewed first on NGV’s Facebook here. Then on NGV’s website after Sunday 3 October here.
