The Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts to Show Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum

Written by Travis Hellstrom Wednesday, 04 January 2012 22:26

Springfield, Massachusetts.– "Old Masters to Monet: Three Centuries of French Painting from the Wadsworth Atheneum" will premier at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield from December 13th through April 29th 2012. The Wadsworth Atheneum, America's oldest public art museum, founded in 1843, has never before presented a full-scale survey of its distinguished collection of French paintings. This exhibition of 50 outstanding masterpieces provides a history of French painting, ranging from the 17th through the 19th centuries and into the beginning of the 20th century. All the major types of painting are represented, including religious and mythological subjects, portraiture, landscape, still life, and genre.

Old Masters to Monet begins with the great 17th-century masters who went to Rome and absorbed Italian ideas of beauty, classical sculpture, and ideal landscape. Claude Lorrain’s “Landscape with St. George and the Dragon,” commissioned by Cardinal Fausto Poli in 1641, is one of the artist’s most important paintings in this country. The 18th-century works present a rich tapestry of life in France, including humorous genre paintings, still lifes by such masters as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, and historical paintings inspired by the French Revolution. Likenesses of aristocrats include “Portrait of the Duchesse de Polignac” by the most important woman painter of the era, Madame Vigée-Lebrun. The 19th century brings the Romanticism of Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix; pastoral and realistic landscapes by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet and Gustave Rousseau; and the Academic style of William Bouguereau. The essence of Impressionism is captured in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's famous painting of his friend Claude Monet at work in the garden of their rented home at Argenteuil in 1873. In addition there are two superb paintings by Monet himself — the 1870 “Beach at Trouville” and the 1904 depiction of his water lily pond. Also included are fine examples by their colleagues Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne. The final group of paintings by the younger Post-Impressionist generation includes Louis Anquetin's “Avenue de Clichy,” a view of a Parisian boulevard on a rainy evening that had a profound effect on Vincent van Gogh, whose own powerful “Self-Portrait” of about 1887 is included.

Finally there are Paul Ranson, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard who focus on intimate interiors. Old Masters to Monet also provides an opportunity for the D’Amour Museum to highlight its own outstanding French collection which features many of the same artists shown in the Wadsworth show. Among the finest French works in the D’Amour Museum are “Refreshments,” 1764 by Chardin, one of the artist’s most celebrated still-life paintings; “The Madman-Kidnapper,” c. 1823 by Géricault, an intense examination of mental illness; and “Grainstack, 1893 by Claude Monet, an example of the artist’s continuing exploration of the effects of light on the landscape.


The Springfield Museums, located in the heart of downtown Springfield, Massachusetts, is comprised of five world-class museums; the Michele & Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts., the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, the Springfield Science Museum, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum and the Museum of Springfield History. The Museums Association is proud to be home to the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden, a series of full–scale bronze sculptures of Dr. Seuss's whimsical creations, honoring the birthplace of Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss. The Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts is one of the two Springfield Museums dedicated to fine and decorative arts. The Art Deco-style museum was erected in response to a bequest from Mr. & Mrs. James Philip Gray, who left their entire estate for the “selection, purchase, preservation, and exhibition of the most valuable, meritorious, artistic, and high class oil paintings obtainable,” and for the construction of a museum to house them. The museum opened in 1934. The first floor of the museum is dedicated to American art ranging from "Portrait of Nymphas Marston" by John Singleton Copley to "Promenade on the Beach" by Winslow Homer to Contemporary glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. The American collection also includes the country's only permanent museum gallery dedicated to the lithographs of Currier & Ives. The second floor is a chronological tour of the museum's fine European art collection. Beginning in the Middle Ages with an intricate 15th-century, Hispano-Flemish Fuentes Retable (altarpiece), the galleries lead visitors through the Renaissance and subsequent centuries with fine paintings from Italy and France. The Dutch and Flemish collection is particularly strong. Familiar names in the Impressionism Gallery include Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Paul Gauguin. Traveling exhibitions can be found in the Wheeler Gallery. Performances, lectures and presentations are offered in the Davis Auditorium. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.springfieldmuseums.org/

Source: PR sent to Editor (reply to Sara Orr - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~