Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism

http://www.crockerartmuseum.org/

“Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism” includes many of the finest examples of mid-19th through early 20th-century French and American landscapes from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition of 40 paintings, on view at the Crocker from June 11 through September 18, 2011, offers a broad survey of landscape painting as practiced by leading French artists such as Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley, as well as their most significant American followers, including Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. Among the earliest works in the exhibition are Charles-François Daubigny's “The River Seine at Mante,” and Gustave Courbet's “Isolated Rock,” which reveal the impact of plein-air sketching practice on landscape art of the period. Heirs to this plein-air tradition, French Impressionists Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Caillebotte, painted highly elaborated "impressions"—the seemingly spontaneous, rapidly executed landscapes and cityscapes that prompted the name of their movement. Monet is represented here by several works including “Rising Tide at Pourville,” “Vernon in the Sun,” and “The Islets at Port-Villez.” Following in the footsteps of the French artists, many American painters sought to improve their skills and find inspiration in Paris and its environs, attending French art academies and frequenting the painting locations made famous by their Barbizon and Impressionist predecessors. Some of the Americans had direct contact with leading French landscape painters, sharing landscape sites or seeking informal guidance from admired mentors. The majority of the American paintings on display depict American locales: beaches, factories, tenements, and notable subjects such as Central Park in works distinguished by brilliant colors and lively, broken brushwork, including Williams Glackens's “Bathing at Bellport, Long Island,” Julian Alden Weir's “Willimantic Thread Factory,” Robert Spencer's “The White Tenement,” and Willard Leroy Metcalf's “Early Spring Afternoon, Central Park.”