COLOURS OF IMPRESSIONISM
COLOURS OF IMPRESSIONISM: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, Art Gallery of South Australia , 29 March-29 July 2018.
Wonderful news: a media release this morning announces a genuine blockbuster exhibition for Adelaide in 2018. More than 65 Impressionist masterpieces from the collection of the Musée d’Orsay will make the trip – some for the first time in Australia – including Monet’s exquisite portrait of rural winter, The Magpie (above).
Painted in 1869, it rarely leaves Paris and is reason along to have visitors flocking to the Art Gallery. Premier and Arts Minister Jay Weatherill is thrilled and says: “...This exhibition is a real coup for our Gallery, and the Musée d’Orsay have been extremely generous in the selection of works of art they are sending to the southern hemisphere, with a number of them coming here for the very first time.”
The Gallery’s Director Nick Mitzevich says it’s, “the most important exhibition ever to be shown at the Art Gallery of South Australia. With so few Impressionist works held in Australian collections, the exhibition presents a rare opportunity for Australians to see the movement’s radical evolution of colour.”
As well as the marvellous Magpie, Monet will also be represented by his tender portrait of Renoir, seen here, while the list of artists represented is a who’s who of Impressionism: in A-Z order, we’ll be able to sample Angrand, Boudin, Caillebotte, Cezanne, Corot, Courbet, Cross, Daubigny, Degas, Delacroix, Gauguin, Guillemet, Jongkind, Fantin-Latour, Lepine, Luce, Manet, Morisot, Pissarro (Camille and Lucien), Renoir, Seurat, Signac, Sisley, Stevens, Tissot and van Rysselberghe.
The cherry on top is the exhibition space – the 19th century Elder Wing. It will be like stepping back in time to the tall, natural light-filled galleries where eminent Victorians strolled and argued about the radical new way of painting. When filled with these pictures it’ll be the experience of a lifetime.
Not to be missed!
