Dallas Museum of Art presents a Landmark Exhibition of Normandy Coast Masterworks

Written by Mason Davenport Wednesday, 26 October 2011 03:27

DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas Museum of Art presents a landmark exhibition exploring the influential and profound relationship between photographers and painters who lived and worked along the Normandy coast in France during the mid-19th century. The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 reveals how the convergence of social, technological and commercial forces within the region affected artistic production and dramatically transformed the course of photography, impressionism and modern painting. The exhibition will feature some 100 works, including vintage prints, paintings, pastels and watercolors, by artists and photographers including Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Gustave Le Gray, and Claude Monet.

On view through May 23, 2010, The Lens of Impressionism will be complemented by the presentation of Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea, a special exhibition drawn from the Museum’s collections opening in April that will explore how coastal landscapes have been portrayed by artists throughout the past century. The Lens of Impressionism has been organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The Dallas presentation, which marks the final stop of this major exhibition, will feature important loans and a new section exploring early photographic techniques and technology.

“The Lens of Impressionism provides a wonderful opportunity to connect visitors with masterpieces by some of the greatest impressionist artists, including Monet and Degas, and also to offer insight and exposure to their colleagues, the pioneers of the art of photography,” said Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “The presentation at the DMA is enhanced by our forthcoming exhibition Coastlines, which will further explore the theme, as well as in our own collection of impressionist works from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which this year celebrates its 25th year as part of the DMA.”

The exhibition will showcase paintings, photographs and drawings by some of the most treasured artists in the Western canon—Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas among them—as well as by pioneering photographers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq. Inspired by the scenic Normandy coast of France, these works include representations of beach scenes, seascapes, fishing villages, resorts and the region’s pastoral beauty. Archival materials related to early tourism will also be included in the exhibition to provide an innovative examination of the impact of the then-new medium of photography on ideas of image making, the recording of passing time, the capacities of painting and the rise of impressionism itself.

“The Lens of Impressionism presents new insight into and scholarship on the response of impressionist painters to early photography within the context of a single geographic locale,” said Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art and the coordinating curator for the exhibition. “The work that was developed in the second half of the 19th century in the Normandy coast—a region that was intensely explored and celebrated by artists during this time—tells a revealing story about the cross-pollination of ideas between the emerging impressionist art movement and the new field of photography.”

Exclusive to the Dallas presentation is a special section that illustrates the technology and techniques of early photography through works from the Dallas Museum of Art’s collections as well as loans from the Amon Carter Museum.

As early as the 1820s, painters were attracted to the rugged north coast of France, with its towns and fishing villages little changed from medieval times. Richard Parkes Bonington looked through the eyes of the luminous English pastoral tradition, while the Frenchman Eugène Isabey favored rough-hewn surfaces. The latter'sBoat Dashing Against a Jetty captures the stormy surge and onlookers in violent strokes and squiggles of paint.

The opening of rail connections from Paris, beginning in 1847, soon made the Normandy coast a favored holiday destination for the newly prosperous middle class. The sea replaced sulfurous spa waters as a therapeutic agent, and new hotels and casinos sprang up almost overnight.

The little Norman towns could seem oases far removed from the political turmoils and invasions that rocked Paris every 20 years or so. Even as the Franco-Prussian War was threatening, Monet, on his honeymoon in Trouville, could paint smartly dressed vacationers promenading outside a grand Second Empire hotel.

Both painters and photographers marketed their wares to the new waves of tourists. And both were of two minds about the explosion of human activity on formerly unspoiled beachfronts.

After viewing The Lens of Impressionism, visitors are encouraged to explore the Museum’s Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which is acclaimed for its impressionist and post-impressionist works by such artists as Bonnard, Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, and van Gogh. Encompassing more than 1,400 works, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper and decorative arts objects, the collection is displayed at the DMA in a re-creation of the couple’s Riviera home, Villa La Pausa. This spectacular bequest, which was presented to the Museum 25 years ago, transformed the DMA’s collection of late 19th-century French art and founded the institution’s collection in European decorative arts.

Special audio tours for The Lens of Impression exhibition and the Reves Collection will highlight works in the exhibition along with select masterpieces from the Reves Collection. Additional background information and material on the exhibition and from the Reves Collection can also be accessed by visitors on Wi-Fi enabled smartphones and media players.  Visit the The Dallas Museum of Art at : www.dm-art.org/

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