‘Impressionist Landscapes: Monet to Sargent’ Comes to the Speed Art Museum

Some of the Impressionist treasures from the Brooklyn Museum will be heading west to Louisville for Impressionist Landscapes: Monet to Sargent, an exhibition of more than 60 Impressionist paintings at the Speed Art Museum. The Impressionist Landscapes exhibit runs from February 4, 2011, to May 22, 2011.

The exhibition, which was organized by the Brooklyn Museum for its own showing in 2007, contains landscape paintings by American, French and other European artists of the late-19th century and early 20th centuries.

“Since these works will never again be shown together, this is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see an extraordinary range of Impressionist paintings,” said Ruth Cloudman, the Speed’s chief curator, who is organizing the exhibition in Louisville.

Included in the exhibit are French artists such as Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley and some of their American contemporaries, including John Singer Sargent and Frederick Childe Hassam. Claude Monet is represented in Impressionist Landscapes by several works, including Rising Tide at Pourville (1882), The Islets at Port-Villez (1891), Vernon in the Sun (1894), and the Speed’s own painting, The Church at Varengeville, Grey Weather (1882).

Impressionism, with its emphasis on painting outdoors and on color, shape and spontaneity, revolutionized the art world in the 1860s and 1870s.

Visitors can also see the photographs taken by artist Stephen Shore of the Claude Monet’s gardens at Giverny, which were immortalized by the French Impressionist master a century earlier.

Says museum director Charles Venable: “The concurrent exhibition, The Gardens at Giverny: A View of Monet’s World, is installed in such a way that one will be able to enter a gallery filled with Monet paintings and then enter the magical world of his famous garden as seen through the photographs of Stephen Shore. This will be an experience that no one will want to miss.”

J.B. Speed Art Museum Speed Speed Art Museum Brooklyn Museum New York New York City Impressionists Impressionism exhibit exhibition art exhibition Claude Monet Gustave Courbet Georges Seurat CCamille Pissaro Alfred Sisley John Singer Sargent Frederick Childe Hassam Giverny France Stephen Shore Steven Shore Manet Monet gardens