Impressionists by the Sea celebrates 19th-century representations of the northern coastline of France. The exhibition, which consists of some sixty paintings, explores the origins and development of the scenes of the newly fashionable seaside from the early 1860s to the early 1870s, in the work of Monet, Manet, Courbet and Whistler. It looks at beach scenes of the 1880s, in which the Impressionists, notably Monet, turned their backs on the depictions of people and used their new painting techniques to capture the effects of weather and light on the coastline.
The summer boulevard of Paris
During the 19th-century, the northern coast of France was transformed from being the preserve of local populations who earned their livelihood from the sea to being adopted as the province of holidaymakers. During the summer months the coast saw its beaches, fishing villages and modest ports transformed into an extension of modern urban life, 'the summer boulevard of Paris'. From the 1820s onwards, the coast provided important subjects for artists in France, who sought to capture on canvas these social and economic changes.
The meeting of land and sea
Initially, painters portrayed the coast in Romantic terms, focusing on the evocation of the sublime forces of nature and depiction of picturesque scenes of local fishermen. By the 1860s stylish holidaymakers began to appear in paintings, as many of the resorts in the area, such as Deauville and Trouville, became fashionable. The exhibition concentrates on those works that show the beach itself - the meeting of land and sea; it is this that reveals most clearly the painters' approaches to the theme - both to the uses of the beach, for work and pleasure, and to the natural forces that shaped the coastline.
Impressionists and their contemporaries
Against a background of late Romantic views by Eugène Isabey and Paul Huet, together with austere realist representations by Gustave Courbet, Impressionists by the Sea reveals the respective origins of the fashionable contemporary beach scene from the early 1860s to the early 1870s. In addition, a small group of more conventional representations of beach scenes, by artists such as Whistler and Cazin, have been selected to provide the context within which the Impressionists' pictorial innovations were received. These works of art, created for acceptance by the official Salon, are powerful examples of the popularly acclaimed treatment of this subject. The contrast with the Impressionists highlights the distinctive qualities of these artists' experiments as they appeared to their contemporaries.
lllustration: Pierre-Auguste Renoir,By the Seashore, 1883. Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 72.4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. H. O. Havemeyer Collection. Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.125). Photo © 1999 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
PUBLICATION
Exhibition catalogue, wilth essays by Professor John House of the Courtauld Institute, London, on the pictorial representation of the development of the French seaside during the 19th-century, and essays by Dr. David Hopkin of Hertford College, Oxford, on the economic interface between traditional fishing industries and new recreationalfunctions. Catalogue entries on each work. 156p. 110 illustrations, Publishd by Royal Academy of Arts. Hard back - £27.96; Soft back - £16.95
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