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Monet and the Impressionists

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

11 October 2008-26 January 2009
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery Rd, Sydney

Impressionism was a conceptual movement that spread like wildfire throughout the arts in Europe in the late 19th century, from visual art to literature and music, which sought to leave an impression of something subtly suggested rather than fleshing out a subject in its absolute entirety.

The movement is a beautiful earmark in time, especially when you consider that this was during the steady throes of the industrial age when mechanisation was the new craze. The arts retaliated with a movement entirely devoted to the subjective human experience; the visual leg saw artists leave their studios and their constructed classical themes and take their canvas and paints outdoors for the first time, en plein air, exploring their natural aesthetic and emotional response to what they saw and visually recording it.

This well-rounded exhibition is 60 paintings deep and all on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Art's extensive Impressionist collection. With 29 works of Monet's alone, taken from the 76 that the institution has been accumulating since 1889, this is the most comprehensive collection of Monet's to be exhibited in Australia since the blockbuster, Monet and Japan, at the National Gallery of Australia in 2001. Rounding out the exhibition are works from other visionaries including Cezanne, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas and Sisley.

Here is a chance to soak up an ephemeral exhibition of one of the most significant visual movements in our history, so far.

Julianne Gill