The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Features Two French Avant-Garde Painting Exhibits This Fall with “An Impressionist Autumn”
MFAH is the only venue for both exhibitions, which will be on view through January 12, 2020
Beginning October 20, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will pair two exhibitions that situate the Impressionist movement in the evolution of the 19th-century French avant-garde: Monet to Picasso: A Very Private Collection and Berthe Morisot: Impressionist Original.
“An Impressionist Autumn” celebrates French avant-garde painting with two exhibitions that capture a “Who’s Who” of the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern movements.
“We are fortunate to present for the first time 30 major modern paintings from a significant private collection. While individual works have been loaned to museums over the years, this group has never been exhibited together before,” said Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
“Paired with a focused selection of Berthe Morisot’s paintings, the two exhibitions together capture a ‘Who’s Who’ of the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern movements, the artists who defined French art at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.”
“Monet to Picasso” presents a private collection in its entirety for the first time
Monet to Picasso: A Very Private Collection features 30 paintings by the pivotal artists who sparked the major movements of the late19th through mid-20th centuries.
Assembled over decades, this selection chronicles key moments in the development of modern art in Paris: the evolution of Impressionism from its roots in the work of artists, including Corot, and represented by the work of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Mary Cassatt; the emergence of the Post-Impressionist painters, including Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gaugin, and Paul Cézanne; and the leading figures of 20th-century abstraction, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger.
“Berthe Morisot: Impressionist Original” showcases the artist’s revolutionary portraiture
Berthe Morisot: Impressionist Original highlights the artist’s approach to portraiture and her focus on the life of women in modern Paris, her singular role in the French Impressionist movement.
Following upon the recent internationally touring retrospective of the artist’s work, Impressionist Original will feature two dozen paintings from public and private lenders, including four important works in Houston collections that could not be included in the traveling exhibition.
Morisot’s domestic scenes focus on children, family, and flowers, capturing a woman’s life in the late 19th century. Through her portrayal of the human figure, Morisot was able to explore the themes of modern life that came to define Impressionism—the intimacy of contemporary bourgeois living and leisure activities, female fashion, and women’s domestic work—while blurring distinctions between interior and exterior, public and private, finished and unfinished.
The exhibition illuminates the artist’s role as an essential figure within the Impressionist movement. One of the founding members of the Impressionist group, along with Monet, Degas, Sisley and Renoir, Morisot achieved critical and commercial success during her lifetime.
The selected works on view reveal a painter who, against the norms of her time and her elevated social background, became an important member of the Parisian avant-garde from the late 1860s until her death in 1895.
TICKETS & INFORMATION
Tickets, available online and on-site, include entry to both exhibitions, plus Museum general admission. Go to www.mfah.org for tickets and more details.
- MFAH Member Free
- Adult (19+) $23
- Senior (65+ w/ID), Military (w/ID), College Student (19+ w/ID), Youth (13–18) $18
- Child (12 & younger) Free
PHOTO CREDIT: V. SWEETEN