Eloquently surveying the development of Impressionism in both France and America, French Impressionism and Boston will tell the fascinating story of how the latest and most advanced examples of French art came to be collected by eager Bostonians during the second half of the nineteenth century. Boston was home to some of the best-informed and most progressive collectors of modern painting in the United States.

They were among the first to embrace the successive waves of stylistic innovation occurring in France, and, along with their peers in New York, the most avid collectors of modern French art.

Not surprisingly, the Museum of Fine Arts was the first American museum to organize a Monet retrospective (in 1911) and to purchase a work by Edgar Degas, Race Horses at Longchamps, 1871, included in this exhibition.

French Impressionism and Boston consists of fifty-three paintings; among them are twelve Monets, including Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist’s Garden at Argenteuil, 1875, Meadow with Haystacks near Giverny, circa 1875 and Waterlilies, 1905. Other highlights include Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s Forest of Fontainebleau, 1846; Edouard Manet’s Street Singer, circa 1862; Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Grand Canal, Venice, 1881; Childe Hassam’s Grand Prix Day, 1887; and John Singer Sargent’s Helen Sears, 1895. French Impressionism and Boston: Masterworks from the Museum of Fine Arts has been organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

 

This exhibition was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts and is made possible by Fidelity Investments through the Fidelity Foundation.

The local presentation has been underwritten in part by the Laurence Levine Charitable Fund and Sir Thomas R. Moore, The Joseph and Gioconda King Exhibition Endowment, The Priscilla and John Richman Endowment for American Art, The R.H. Norton Trust and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.