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Collecting Impressionism: “Something Solid and Durable” Back to Top
In the early years of
Impressionism, artists struggled to find markets for their work, and many lived hand-to-mouth. Impressionism
changed when artists quarreled with one another, withdrew from exhibitions, or, like Monet and Renoir, reverted to
a more Academic style they hoped would lure buyers. Cézanne also turned away from Impressionism, disappointed that
he hadn’t been able “to make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums.”
However, one visionary
Paris art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, recognized the greatness of Impressionism as early as 1870. “A true picture
dealer should also be an enlightened patron; he should, if necessary, sacrifice his immediate interest to his
artistic convictions,” Durand-Ruel wrote. He regularly bought, sold, and promoted Impressionist paintings during
the early years. Finally, in the 1880s and ‘90s, the world the Impressionists painted began to embrace them.
American collectors were largely responsible for this reversal of fortune, buying enough paintings to keep several
artists at work. The Musée de Luxembourg in Paris mounted the first museum exhibition of Impressionist art in 1897,
and an exhibition at the 1900 World Exposition sealed the artists’ reputations. Paintings sold twenty-five years
earlier for a mere fifty francs, noted Durand-Ruel, now fetched 50,000 francs.
What caused the
public’s change of heart? “Ironically,” writes art historian Ann Dumas, “the Impressionists” former status as
renegades enhanced their appeal to the connoisseurship and speculative skills of the bourgeois collector...(it was)
a new art for a new class that wanted images of the world they inhabited.”
Perhaps more crucial
to its present-day popularity is the broadly appealing color, spontaneity, and freshness of Impressionist art.
Before the first exhibition in 1874, the art critic Armand Silvestre observed of these paintings, “A blond light
pervades them, and everything is gaiety, clarity, spring festivals, golden evenings or apple trees in blossom. They
are windows opening on the joyous countryside, on rivers full of pleasure boats stretching into the distance, on a
sky which shines with light mists, on the outdoor life, panoramic and charming.”
Acknowledgements
Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums
is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, in collaboration with the
Denver Art Museum and the Seattle Art Museum. Back to Top
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