About the Impressionism (and Its Context) Walk in New York
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art contains one of the most comprehensive collections of French Impressionist art outside of the Louvre. It's most popular attraction, the museum's 19th century galleries, were recently renovated and have been reinstalled with many well-known images by Degas, Monet and Renoir and a few significant additions including Scandanavian, German and American artists. As a result, the galleries now allow for an interesting and comprehensive view of 19th century art movements and styles, including Neo-Classicism, Romantisicim, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Barbizon school, Realism, and, of course, Impressionism.
An in-depth tour of Impressionism and 19th century art at the Met
This walking seminar through the 19th-century painting galleries situates the Impressionists within the artistic and social/political movements of their century. Along the way, we'll appreciate the academic art that was popular at the time, along with many paintings by artists such as V
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New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art contains one of the most comprehensive collections of French Impressionist art outside of the Louvre. It's most popular attraction, the museum's 19th century galleries, were recently renovated and have been reinstalled with many well-known images by Degas, Monet and Renoir and a few significant additions including Scandanavian, German and American artists. As a result, the galleries now allow for an interesting and comprehensive view of 19th century art movements and styles, including Neo-Classicism, Romantisicim, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Barbizon school, Realism, and, of course, Impressionism.
An in-depth tour of Impressionism and 19th century art at the Met
This walking seminar through the 19th-century painting galleries situates the Impressionists within the artistic and social/political movements of their century. Along the way, we'll appreciate the academic art that was popular at the time, along with many paintings by artists such as Van Gogh and Cezanne which became iconic in the twentieth century. Our conversation will range beyond art too, to consider the vast changes that took place in the West culturally, economically and socially from the Napoleonic Age to the beginnings of World War I.
Although the walk takes different forms depending on the docent leading it, we usually begin with the work of Ingres and Delacroix in the early 1800s where we can set up the friction between the Neo-classicists, with their emphasis on drawing, and the Romantics, who sought to express themselves through color. We might compare Ingres' cool, detailed portraits of the new bourgeois with Delacroix's operatic images of exotic scenes illustrates the divisions in French art at the beginning of the century. We may move on from here to contemplate the Romantic artists of England such as Constable and Turner, to the Pre-Raphaelites and to the French painters of the Barbizon school, including Theodore Rousseau and Millet. In the renovation, a number of small rooms have been added to exhibit the Met's extensive collection of 19th century landscape paintings, particularly its numerous works by Corot.
The central galleries containing the many masterworks of Impressionism will absorb a bulk of our time. Paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas line the walls along with side galleries that contain Degas' sculptures and pastels. In addition, pictures by Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, the two major female artists who participated in the Impressionist movement, are found side by side with their male counterparts. Images of French life in both city and country, featuring the Impressionists and their families, reveal moments in time when painters sought to capture “modern life.” Our docent will pick a path through the many works to develop a narrative that helps to ground and expand our knowledge of this critical period in art.
If there's time, we'll continue to the Post Impressionists, where we find Van Gogh's brilliant landscapes of Provence and Gauguin's images of Polynesian women as well as paintings from their time together in Brittany. An entire room is devoted to portraits, still lives and views of Mont Sainte-Victoire by Cezanne. The galleries lead us to the close of the nineteenth century with pictures by Henri Rousseau, Pissarro, and Seurat, all taking the art of the 1890s in diverging directions. The final rooms focus on the early work of Picasso and Matisse who carry us through Fauvism, Cubism and ultimately into Modernism.
Taken in its entirety, this walk seeks to explore the entire sweep of the 19th century art movements, grounding the Impressionists in their historic and aesthetic context.
