The National Gallery of Victoria reopens on Friday 25 June 2021 with this year’s Melbourne Winter Masterpieces: French Impressionism. This major exhibition includes over 100 masterworks of French Impressionism from the renowned collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), with paintings by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, including 79 works that have never been exhibited in Australia.
Presented thematically across ten sections, the exhibition opens with early works by Monet and his forebears, Eugène Boudin and painters of the Barbizon School, illustrating the impact on Monet of their method of painting outdoors en plein air (‘in the open air’) to capture changing conditions in nature. The growth of the Impressionist movement in subsequent decades is mapped through an exploration of the favoured subjects, ideas, and techniques, including prominent brushwork, unique points of view, arresting use of colour, as well as specific locations that were dear to the artists, such as Paris, Fontainebleau Forest, Pontoise, Giverny, the Normandy coast and the South of France. Many artists also placed equal weight on recording movement and change in urban and domestic realms. The exhibition also features still life paintings, intimate interiors and street scenes by such artists as Manet, Renoir and Gustave Caillebotte.
25 June to 3 October 2021, NGV International, Ground Level.
For more information, and to book tickets, visit https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/french-impressionism/.
