The fluid paint handling and sense of self-absorption of Mary Cassatt's "Mrs Duffee Seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading,” 1876, (shown left) grew out of the artist's admiration for similar works by rococo star Jean-Honore Fragonard (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) such as "A Young Girl Reading,” circa 1776, National Gallery of Art.
:Although the French Impressionists were dedicated to spontaneity and depicting contemporary life, their art was importantly influenced by the work of Old Masters and others who preceded them. This theme has been examined with regard to individual Impressionists; this is the first show to explore those influences on a comprehensive basis.
Juxtaposing works by such pioneering Impressionists as Bazille, Cassatt, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro and Renoir with those of El Greco, Raphael, Rubens and Velazquez, "Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past," demonstrates how conscious the new group was of the techniques, traditions and subject matter of those who had gone before. Featured are 86 works, including paintings and works on paper, drawn from 40 museums.
The show is organized by and on view at the Denver Art Museum. It is co-curated by Denver's deputy director for collections and programs, Timothy Standring, and Ann Dumas, a London-based independent scholar, in collaboration with the High Museum of Art (where it closed in January) and the Seattle Art Museum. It will be on view through May 25.
The bright palette and bravura brushwork of Berthe Morisot's outdoor domestic scenes, such as "In the Garden at Maurecourt,” circa 1884, were inspired by the work of French rococo artists. Toledo Museum of Art.
The exhibition, explains the High's director, Michael E. Shapiro, "asks visitors to rethink preconceived notions about the Impressionist movement and…allow[s] audiences to discover how these artists, like many of their predecessors, imitated earlier art, borrowed particular motifs and transformed existing compositions and techniques into something completely new."
Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of precedents set by Seventeenth Century Dutch and Spanish and Eighteenth Century French art, as these movements were viewed by the Impressionists.
As Dumas observes in her catalog essay, when the Impressionists' first group exhibition opened in Paris in 1874, "Their paintings seemed to be a provocative rejection of all the qualities most revered in the art of the Old Masters and still preserved in the work of contemporary academic artists: draftsmanship, harmonious composition and subjects drawn from religion, history or mythology." Charles Beaudelaire dubbed them "painters of modern life," and the bright palette, contemporary — often mundane — subjects and the lack of finish of the works displayed "suggested that here was a group of rebels daring to present mere sketches as if they were finished paintings suitable for public exhibition," writes Dumas.
