Skip to main content

Praised & Ridiculed French Painting 1820–1880


Kunsthaus

Zürich

10 Nov. 2017–28 Jan. 2018 

http://www.kunsthaus.ch/gefeiert-und-verspottet/?lan=en

‘In’ one day, ‘out’ the next: even in the 19th century, fashion was fickle. Romanticism, Realism and Impressionism were competing currents within French painting that were hailed by a small group of enthusiasts but dismissed by most critics. 

 

The exhibition focuses on the years between 1820 and 1880. 1822 saw Delacroix’s first appearance at the Salon, the official exhibition platform for artists, at which he issued a challenge to Ingres and his fellow neoclassicists; 1880 marked the end of the Salon as a government-sponsored event. During this period Géricault, Corot, Daumier, Daubigny, Courbet, Manet, Pissarro and Monet also abandoned the approved academic and neoclassicist painting style of the era. Highly controversial in their lifetime, these artists are now celebrated worldwide as the ‘precursors of Modernism’.

Yet 19th-century French painting offers a profusion of other equally important artists who, at the time, enjoyed greater recognition and the plaudits of art critics and audiences alike. Although indebted to traditional painting techniques, artists such as Delaroche, Couture, Meissonier, Cabanel, Gérôme and Bouguereau were themselves highly innovative. In the canon of French painting from that period laid down in the German-speaking countries at the start of the 20th century, however, these outstanding figures came to be sidelined. Now the Kunsthaus sets out to rediscover them.


The exhibition catalogue ( 248 pp., 210 ill.), with contributions by Oskar Bätschmann, Sandra Gianfreda, Marianne Koos, Matthias Krüger, Monika Leonhardt and James H. Rubin, is published by Hirmer Verlag, Munich.
In addition to a detailed introduction and brief biographies of the artists, it contains essays on the art system of the time, history painting, the reception of Chardin in still-life painting, and landscape painting.

Images 

 

Ernest Meissonier

Campaign of France, 1814, 1864, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, bequest of Alfred Chauchard, 1909

Henri Fantin-Latour

White Roses and Peaches, 1873, Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection, Zurich

Camille Corot

Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld, 1861, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the Agnes Cullen Arnold Endowment Fund, 87.190

Gustave Courbet

The Source, 1862, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929





Edouard Manet

The Swallows, 1873, Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection, Zurich


Camille Pissarro

Banks of the Oise, Pontoise, 1877, Kunsthaus Zürich, Johanna and Walter L. Wolf Collection, 1984

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vatican Micromosaic of Saints Valeria and Martial, Rediscovered Masterpiece

Vatican Micromosaic of Saints Valeria and Martial Everyone loves a good story. In the realm of fine art and antiques, a good story, or what we call “provenance”, has the power to take a work of art from exceptional to awe-inspiring. In terms of workmanship, subject matter and sheer size, this incredible micromosaic detailing the Biblical story of Saints Valeria and Martial has it all. Measuring over 10 feet tall, the precision and detail required to execute such a piece is baffling. Combined with the high cost of materials, micromosaics of this immense size and artistry are beyond rare. When you factor in its provenance of being crafted by the prestigious Vatican’s Mosaic Studio and displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica, you’re dealing with an undeniable masterpiece of historical significance. It took a team of seven skilled mosaicists over two and a half years to complete this majestic masterpiece. Given that Vatican relics, especially ones on such a grand scale as this, almost never lea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Klimt and Schiele: Drawn

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston February 25 through May 28, 2018 Marking the centenary of the deaths of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and Egon Schiele (1890–1918), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), presents a special exhibition of drawings on loan from the Albertina Museum in Vienna. Klimt and Schiele: Drawn , on view from February 25 through May 28, 2018 in the Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery, examines the separate, yet parallel experiences of the acclaimed Austrian modernists, as well as the compelling ways in which their work relates—particularly in their provocative depictions of the human body. Organized thematically, the selection of 60 works on paper extends from the artists’ early draftsmanship to explore how each shifted away from traditional training to more incisive and unconventional explorations of humanity over the course of their careers. The MFA is one of three museums—and the only U.S. venue—hosting exhibitions of the Albertina’s rarely loaned drawings b...
Post a Comment
Read more

COLOURS OF IMPRESSIONISM MASTERPIECES FROM THE MUSÉE D'ORSAY

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide    29 March-29 July 2018 More than 65 Impressionist masterpieces from the renowned collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris feature in a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay charts the revolution of colour that lies at the very heart of Impressionism and includes master works by Monet, Renoir, Manet, Morisot, Pissarro and Cézanne, among many others. From the dark tones of Manet's Spanish-influenced paintings, to the rich green and blue hues of the French countryside as painted by Cézanne, Monet and Pissarro, to the rosy pigments of Renoir's and Morisot's female figures, the exhibition traces the development of colour in the Impressionists' radical reshaping of painting in the nineteenth century. Boat In The Flood At Port-Marly by Alfred Sisley (1876   Although brightening the palette was the main concern of future Impressionists from the outs...
Post a Comment
Read more