These paintings not only tell us about the time and context of their production, but also about favourite activities such as picnics and promenading, about popular places like the banks of the Seine and the Normandy beaches and about innovations of that time such as the railroad. Above all, it is the artistic brilliance that fascinates spectators again and again, the love for details and the unceasing investigation of light and colour, of weather phenomena, seasons and the elements.

Starting with the precursors of plein air painting, the School of Barbizon and the Circle of Honfleur, the exhibition will display masterworks by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and their contemporaries, taking the viewer from the forest of Fontainebleau to the Atlantic coast, from the banks of the Seine and Oise, to blooming fields and finally into Monet’s garden at Giverny.

This exhibition, divided into seven sections, will present outstanding paintings by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Paul Gauguin. The loans stem from prestigious institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C., the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, to mention but a few. Overall the exhibition showcases a total of about 50 paintings.

Exhibition venue:

ARoS Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, October 09, 2015 – January 10, 2016

Curator: Suzanne Greub in collaboration with Erlend Høyersten, Director of ARoS Art Museum

Catalogue Editor: Suzanne Greub

The catalogue has been published by Hirmer Publishing, Munich 2015. Languages: English, Danish