Legendary Impressionist Exhibit at San Diego Museum of Art

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Offering a lively contrast to the ancient and dimly lit Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, the San Diego Museum of Art has adorned its galleries with over 100 brightly colored Impressionist paintings. They are the focus of a major summertime art exhibition in San Diego—the first to explore the international popularity of the famous Impressionist art colony that formed around Claude Monet’s famous garden retreat in Giverny, France.

Running through Sept. 30, “Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915” at the San Diego Museum of Art spans the 30-year period bookended by Giverny’s first bohemian arrivals, to the exodus of all foreign-born colonists necessitated by World War I.

Monet Who?

Anyone who wasn’t born yesterday is already very familiar with Claude Monet. He’s the guy who turned the Parisian art world on its ear in the late 19^th century with his loosely painted canvases that were more about color, atmosphere, brushstroke, and the transient effects of light and perception than the subject of the painting itself. He quickly banded together with like-minded artistic mavericks to form what has become today the most popular—and perhaps over-exposed—art movement in history: Impressionism.

After making a big name for himself among admirers and detractors alike, Monet settled in the sleepy and picturesque village of Giverny, just northwest of Paris in the region of Normandy, in 1883. There he could paint undisturbed to his heart’s content—or so he thought.

The First Wave

Unfortunately for Monet, it didn’t take long in the golden age of the “artist colony” for many young, wannabe Impressionists to track him down.

According to the San Diego Museum of Art’s executive director, Derrick Cartwright, “Most of the artists were in Paris already, since it was (at the end of the 19^th century) a major center of art study. The Parisian art world was small enough that word spread of Monet’s country estate, and it was natural enough for these aspiring painters to want to seek him out personally … The colony quickly established itself, despite Monet’s ultimate reluctance to play host to scores of these young artists.”

Among the first arrivals were John Leslie Breck, William Blair Bruce, Theodore Robinson, and Theodore Wendel. These impressionist artists certainly aren’t household names like Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro. But this exhibition is organized by the Musée d’Art Américain Giverny, a major storehouse of works painted by, obviously enough, the many artists who came from America and all over Europe to colonize Giverny at the turn of the 20^th century.

What’s in the Show

A big draw for many visitors to the San Diego art exhibition is undoubtedly the four paintings by Monet, which, according to Cartwright, “demonstrate the changes in his approach to painting in an ‘impressionist’ technique.” Also featured are lush canvases by Frederick Carl Frieseke, Willard Metcalf, and Guy Rose, names that may be familiar to students of American art.

In addition, says Cartwright, “What I hope will surprise and impress our visitors are the dozens of other artists—Lawton Parker, Lilla Cabot Perry, Mary MacMonnies, Karl Anderson—who are intimately associated with Giverny’s history, but who haven’t received the same degree of attention as the others.”

The 100-plus works in the exhibition not only capture the beauty of the region around Giverny as only a second-generation Impressionist artist could paint it. They also bear witness to the growth of the colony itself, presenting scenes in and around the famous Hôtel Baudy, portraits of the artists themselves, and later, as artists bought homes and settled down, images of rural domesticity, including the ubiquitous staple of late Impressionist art: the family in a garden.

Monet interacted only sparingly with his new neighbors, so a major driving force of the colony naturally became the camaraderie among the artists themselves. Many would gather each night in the Hôtel Baudy—which served American-style food and drink—when it was too late to paint en plein air to swap stories and discuss technique, critique each other’s work, and of course, have a good time.

What Makes This One Special?

Remarkably for a show of this depth and magnitude, the San Diego Museum of Art is the sole U.S. venue on the exhibition’s two-city international tour. It opened at the Musée d’Art Américain Giverny last spring before flying across the pond to sunny San Diego.

Beyond that, what makes this exhibition particularly special, according to Cartwright, is that “This is not your typical ‘blockbuster’ show of Impressionist work …Many of these works have not been seen in American museum contexts before. For example, there is a large painting by Mary MacMonnies, which was purchased by the French government after its display at the Salon, and it will be interesting to see how the San Diego audience responds to such novel work.”