Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Imagine a world without Claude Monet’s water lilies or Edgar Degas’ dancers?
Monet, Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley are among the most recognizable artists in the world, but the Impressionist movement got off to a rocky start. Without the support of one art collector, Paul Durand-Ruel, Impressionist art might not still exist.
Durand-Ruel saw the potential and was responsible for turning the tide toward the Impressionists. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is showcasing an exhibit devoted to his dogged work in promoting the Impressionists through Sept. 13. It is the first time an exhibition has explored Durand-Ruel’s role in the rise of Impressionism.
The Impressionist art movement, developed in Paris, is characterized by visible brush strokes, vivid colors, use of light and ordinary subjects. Jennifer Thompson, a curator of European paintings and sculptures predating 1900, describes the Impressionists as “artists who were painting in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, showing modern Paris life.”
Impressionist art is displayed in museums around the world, but wasn’t always cherished. Some were ridiculed by critics, collectors and the public.
“If you look at them very closely, the brushwork seemed to be very messy and disordered and almost chaotic and random,” Thompson said. “But of course what they were trying to do was capture the sense of the moving, ever changing world around them, whether it be the weather or the dynamic aspects of the modern city of Paris.”
Norman Keyes, the museum’s director of communications describes Durand-Ruel as a dealer who “made a bet that these guys were the ones to get behind and he did that at great cost. He nearly went bankrupt twice.”
Thompson said Durand-Ruel met Monet and Pissarro in 1871 London and began buying their work.
“It takes a good three decades to go from those very critical and biting newspaper reviews to the point where these works are selling for quite respectable sums and are recognized as works that respectable collectors would like to have in their homes,” she said.
Durand-Ruel inherited a gallery from his parents and slowly introduced Impressionist paintings into exhibitions of more conservative works.
“He was quite adventurous in showing paintings, not only in Paris, but also sending them to London, to Brussels and even to New York in the 1880s,” Thompson said.
The dealer created solo exhibitions for Impressionist artists which helped build a reputation and understanding.
“They had been exhibiting in groups so they were just known as the Impressionists. When he started to show them as single artists, it enabled him to start talking about their biographies, who they were, where they grew up, what their influences were and this then built a sense of the artistic personality,” she said.
Keyes said America played a large role in softening Europeans to accept the Impressionists.
Durand-Ruel “traveled across America, trying to reach out to rich Americans who might be interested in European art,” Keyes said. “It created a market for Impressionism in the United States that was actually stronger and took hold more immediately than the market for Impressionism in France. That goes a long way towards explaining why Americans have such great works of Impressionism in their collections.”
Thompson adds that Durand-Ruel saw successes in selling Impressionism in America.
“That gave him a sort of sense of security so he could finally start to pay back some of his debts and move forward,” she said. “We think of the French Impressionist movement as happening all in France but there’s this element of it from a financial and critical reception that happened in America. As soon as Americans are willing to pay $1,000 for Monets, the French start saying, ‘what do the Americans know that we don’t know?’”
Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting is an exhibit collaboratively designed by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, London’s National Gallery and Paris’ Musée d’Orsay. Given the popularity of the Impressionists, it is challenging for museums to organize a new exhibit around their work.
“Durand-Ruel has been talked about by art historians or curators for a few years,” Thompson said. “There’s never been a full exhibition devoted to him. This [is] an opportunity to look back at the Impressionist movement from its origins to its moment of success and triumph in the early 20th century (and) look at it through the lens of Durand-Ruel.”
The exhibition recreates key moments in Durand-Ruel’s 50-year career. Curators had to make sense of his work by creating a chronological story for visitors. Thompson previews, “One of the earlier galleries will start out by talking about Durand-Ruel’s introduction to the Impressionists and his very first purchases from them. We recreate a number of pivotal exhibitions such as the 1876 Impressionist exhibition. We show seven or eight of the paintings to recreate a sense of what it would have been like if you were in Paris and had the adventurous or really bold quality to go into one of the Impressionist exhibits.”
Also recreated is Monet’s 1883 first solo exhibition and his New York one in 1886.
The exhibition will take over nine galleries in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but Thompson noted two highlights.
“One is an exhibition that Durand-Ruel hosted in 1892 in which Monet showed 15 paintings of poplar trees. It’s the only time all 15 were seen together. We’ll be bringing back together six of those, which is a phenomenal opportunity to do a lot of comparing and contrasting of these different canvases, and to gain a very tangible sense of what Monet was trying to achieve in that series.”
The second, a reunion of three paintings done by Renoir in 1883 featuring dancers. The paintings depict a couple in the city, the country and from a Parisian suburb.
“Having those three together will be an astonishing experience,” Thompson said. “They were all brought to America in 1886 and have been together a few other occasions since then but it’s very rare. To bring so many of these Impressionist paintings together is obviously a great delight. We hope people will enjoy the tremendous story of Durand-Ruel.”
Keyes adds, “There have been a lot of Impressionist shows, but (I’m) proud to say there’s never been one like this.”
