Henri Loyrette

Exhibition at the the Musee d'Orsay, Spring/Summer 1994 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall 1994.

The following are excerpts from a review written by me in October 1994:

"A joint effort between the Metropolitan in New York and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, with loans from museums around the world, the blockbuster exhibit brings together almost two hundred works, many for the first time. The exhibit follows the Impressionists in somewhat chronological order through the decade of the 1860s. There are eleven rooms in the exhibit, each devoted to themes that the Impressionists worked on, such as "History Painting", "Still Life", "the Nude", "Portraiture", "the Realist Landscape", "the Modern Landscape". The exhibit provides a basic introduction to these artists and their early influences and it shows how the Impressionists tried to develop a new style of painting while staying within traditional genres.

"One of the highlights of the exhibition is the reunion of such works as the four paintings of la Grenouillère -- works that haven't been seen together since they were painted ... For the first time, we can see Monet's three views of Paris that he painted from the balcony of the Louvre in 1867. There is also a group of paintings by Renoir, Bazille and Sisely that are together again. The three shared a studio in 1867, and Renoir painted a portrait of Bazille at his easel as he and Sisely were working on still lives of the Heron, which are also in the exhibit."… (meer)