It was April 15, 1874, in the former workshops of the photographer Nadar, boulevard des Capucines in Paris. Berthe Morisot, Edouard Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir came together as a cooperative limited company to open the first Impressionist exhibition, a movement that would forever change the course of art history.
In 2024, the 150th anniversary of this first exhibition will be celebrated far beyond Paris. The Musée d'Orsay, which houses the world’s largest collection of works from this movement that was to revolutionize painting, will indeed lend for several months 178 of his paintings covering a wide temporal spectrum, even going to draw from the pre and post periodsimpressionists with paintings by Daubigny or Manet and up to Bonnard. These works will leave the platforms of the old station to travel in 34 museums throughout France. Among them, that of the Fine Arts and Archaeology of Besançon.
Friendly, artistic and financial relationship between Monet and Courbet
Lunch on the grass of Claude Monet extends his tablecloth to Besançon. Since February 24, the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology welcomes for a exceptional loan the central fragment of the artist’s work, made between 1865 and 1866. In this huge painting, cut into three parts by the painter – one of the three pieces has disappeared - four characters installed in a clearing, one of which has certain features common to Gustave Courbet, native of Ornans, 25 kilometres from the capital of Franche-Comté.
Even if they do not belong to the same generation, the two painters have established a friendly, artistic and financial relationship. When he painted the painting, Monet took a huge financial risk by breaking with his aunt Jeanne-Marguerite Lecadre who financed his work, to turn to Courbet. « Monet was also one of the very few artists – there were only three - to visit Courbet when he was a prisoner for his involvement in the Paris Commune ” explains Laurence Madeline, Institutional Director. The two men finally meet on their approach to painting and the rejection of the systems put in place: Courbet took a step aside in 1855, on the sidelines of the universal exhibition, with the pavilion of realism where he gathered his last works, opening at the same time the way, twenty years earlier, to the impressionist movement to which Monet belonged.
Dialogue with The Hallali of the deer
It is this relationship that the museum wanted to highlight through this loan. “ It was this painting and not another, spearheads Laurence Madeline. We have no impressionist paintings but a beautiful collection of works by Gustave Courbet and it seemed interesting to create a dialogue between the two painters. » Until June 2, the fragment hangs in the museum’s 19th-century room, on an inclined picture rail that separates it from the rest of the paintings and creates a visual link with Courbet’s works, including the Hallali du cerf. « This is a very large painting with characters represented more or less at scale 1notes Laurence Madeline. Lunch on the grass is also a large canvas, with not historical figures as Courbet did but contemporary characters. There is therefore a certain kinship between these two paintings and two artists who are not afraid of the large format. »
Around the loan of this work, a great event will add meaning to this painting: the organization of a Lunch on the grass life size. The city of Besançon and the museum take advantage of the last day of exhibition, on June 2, to organize a large citizen picnic on the occasion of the inauguration of the square of the vegetated Liberation, on which is the old Grain Hall housing the museum. « This creates a dialogue with the city and its inhabitants and shows that a painting like Monet’s in 1866 resonates with the news of a contemporary city where the townspeople express a need for nature and conviviality ” concludes Laurence Madeline.
150 years of Impressionism also in Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay invites you to plunge back into his masterpieces with « Paris, 1874. Inventing Impressionism ” until July 14. This exhibition will include nearly 130 works, including «unmissable» works by Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Sisley or Pissarro. This exhibition will then be presented at the National Gallery of Art in Washington starting September 8.
In parallel, the museum will offer a real immersion in the opening evening of the 1874 exhibition with « An Evening with the Impressionists "a virtual reality experience that allows, for 45 minutes, to go back in time thanks to a re-enactment of the evening of April 15. A cycle of conferences accompanies to approach Impressionism from a new angle and an international symposium, organized on May 16 and 17 with the Fondation de l'université Paris Nanterre, will explore the current forms of the artistic movement.
Partager la page