“印象主义时代的风景画展”将于弗吉尼亚美术馆开幕
“印象主义时代的风景画展”将于2008年2月22日在弗吉尼亚美术馆开幕，展出40幅法国和美国绘画作品，它们是从布鲁克林博物馆收藏品中选出的19世纪末20世纪初的最优秀作品。弗吉尼亚美术馆负责人阿莱克斯•尼耶吉斯称作品“充满光色和新鲜感，表现出了印象主义绘画风格特色。我相信这对于观众来说将是一个非常受欢迎的展览。”展览的最早期作品可以追溯到1850年和1860年，展示了具有进步性的户外写生实践对法国风景绘画的影响。而在19世纪以前，艺术家们大多数在室内工作。展览将展出巴比松画派和现实主义画家如查理•法兰斯瓦•杜比尼、亨利-约瑟夫•哈皮尼斯和古斯塔夫•库尔贝的重要作品。展览还将聚焦于一些法国最受欢迎的印象派画家的作品，这些画家包括欧•布丹（他将是弗吉尼亚美术馆从2007年11月4日到2008年1月27日展览的主题）、克劳德•莫奈、皮埃尔-奥古斯特•雷诺阿和阿尔弗雷德•西斯莱。尤其强调的是莫奈于1908年创作的帆布油画《共和国总督府---威尼斯》。据弗吉尼亚“保罗•梅隆展”的策展人同时也是欧洲艺术部的主管人米歇尔•莫灵博士说，“莫奈可以彻底重塑一个著名的旅游景点，完全赋予它以光彩熠熠的、生气勃勃的特质来适合它独特的框架。相反，展览中的他的另一幅作品，1897年创作的《维雷港上的小岛》，莫奈几乎趋近于抽象主义。”莫灵说其他展出的印象主义作品也是引人注目的。哈皮尼斯1876年作品《伯赫鲍奈早晨的牧场》是这位大师最有抱负的画作之一，其中我们可以看到他如何将约翰•康斯特尔整齐的形式移植到了法国的土壤。杜比尼大约在1885年创作的《在芒特的塞纳河》显示出他是一位书写宁静柔和自然的诗人。卡勒波特大约在1885年创作的《盛开的苹果树》显示了在最革命时期的印象主义强烈的红与绿的交织和碰撞。
弗吉尼亚美术馆展览门票票价为成人8美元，13至18岁之间或持有全日制学生证的每人6美元。10个以上的成人集体购票票价每人6美元。对于13至18岁之间或持有全日制学生证的人票价没有额外折扣。弗吉尼亚美术馆成员或12岁及以下儿童可以免费参观。
RICHMOND, VA.-"Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism," opening Feb. 22, 2008, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will present a selection of 40 French and American paintings that are among the finest examples of late 19th- and early 20th-century landscapes from the Brooklyn Museum collection.
VMFA Director Alex Nyerges says the works are "full of the light and freshness that characterize the Impressionist style of painting. I am sure this will be a very popular exhibition with our visitors."
The show, organized by the Brooklyn Museum, will remain on view in Richmond through May 11, 2008.
"The Brooklyn Museum has a world-class collection of French and American Impressionist paintings, many of which were acquired long before other U.S. art museums were showing these avant garde works. This exhibition, which has been touring in South Korea, will present some of the finest paintings in the Brooklyn collection and has been made available to a few select institutions in the U.S. while the Brooklyn Museum undergoes renovation. We are proud to be able to show it in Richmond," Nyerges says.
The earliest works in the exhibition, dating from the 1850s and 1860s, demonstrate the impact of progressive, outdoor sketching practices on French landscape painting. Before the 19th century, artists had worked mostly inside their studios. Important examples by Barbizon and Realist painters such as Charles François Daubigny, Henri-Joseph Harpignies and Gustave Courbet will be on view in the exhibition.
"French Impressionists, who were the heirs to the new outdoor sketching tradition, painted highly elaborated 'impressions' - that is, they created seemingly spontaneous, rapidly executed canvases that prompted the name of their movement," says Robin Nicholson, VMFA's associate director for exhibitions.
The exhibition also features works by some of the most popular French Impressionists, including Eugène Boudin (who is the subject of a VMFA exhibition to be on view from Nov. 14, 2007, to Jan. 27, 2008), Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley.
A particular highlight is Monet's "Doge's Palace, Venice," a 1908 oil on canvas. "Monet was able to completely reinvent a well known tourist subject, endowing it with a shimmering, glowing quality entirely appropriate to its unique setting. By contrast, in another of his works in the exhibition, 'The Islets at Port-Villez,' 1897, Monet nearly approaches abstraction," says Dr. Mitchell Merling, VMFA's Paul Mellon Curator and head of the department of European art.
Other Impressionist works in the show are equally compelling, Merling says.
"Harpignies' 'A Meadow in the Bourbonnais, Morning,' 1876, is one of this master's most ambitious paintings, in which he can be seen transplanting the formal qualities of John Constable to French soil. 'The River Seine at Mantes,' circa 1856, shows Daubigny at his best as a poet of tranquility and gentle nature. Caillebotte's 'Apple Tree in Bloom,' circa 1885, shows Impressionism at its most revolutionary, with its sharp diagonals and clashing reds and greens."
Following in the footsteps of the French, many late 19th-century American painters found inspiration in the streets of Paris as well as in the city's rural environs. Atmospheric images by George Inness, Theodore Robinson, John Singer Sargent and Julian Alden Weir are among the featured strengths of Brooklyn's holdings to be shown in "Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism."
Dr. Sylvia Yount, VMFA's Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art, says the exhibition also reveals "how Americans selectively absorbed the high-keyed palette and broken brushwork of Impressionism when painting local subjects of leisure and labor.
"Many Americans continued to work in an Impressionist vein through the first two decades of the 20th century. Of course, the ever-popular style continues to delight viewers today," she says.
The exhibition's curators are Theresa A. Carbone, the Brooklyn Museum's Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art, and Judith F. Dolkart, associate curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum.
"Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism" is on view now through Sept. 16 at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla. It will be shown at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh from Oct. 21, 2007, to Jan. 13, 2008; at VMFA from Feb. 22 to May 11, 2008; at the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colo., from June 13 to Sept. 7, 2008; and at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine., from Oct. 19, 2008 to Jan. 4, 2009.
The exhibition has already been shown in South Korea, at the Hangaram Art Museum and at the Busan Museum.
The admission fee for the VMFA showing will be $8 for adults and $6 for those age 13 to 18 or those with a full-time student ID. The fee per person in adult groups of 10 or more (in one ticket purchase) will be $6. There is no additional discount for groups age 13 to 18 or those with a full-time student ID. Admission is free to VMFA members and those age 12 and younger.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is an educational institution of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The museum is on the Boulevard at Grove Avenue. The galleries are open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For additional information about exhibitions and programs, telephone (804) 340-1400 or visit the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Web site, www.vmfa.museum.