Planning a visit to Giverny to see Monet’s home and famous lily-padded garden? Spare a thought and a little energy for a side trip to another attraction in the same village: the Musée des Impressionismes Giverny, whose temporary exhibitions and modernist garden are well worth seeing.
The current show, “The Nahmad Collection: From Monet to Picasso,” features a private collection put together by former art dealer David Nahmad, whom the curator of the exhibition describes as “not just a collector, but a distributor of beauty” because of his generosity in showing his collection and lending works to museums, not shielding them from the public eye as many collectors do, and his brother Ezra. For this exhibition, a selection has been made from what is mostly a collection of modern art to concentrate mainly on Impressionism.
Exceptions include a few works by Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, whose presence is justified by their role as forerunners of modern art and their influence on later artists, notably Picasso and Matisse, who also appear in the show.
While the show features a number of works by notable Impressionists like Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir, the star here is, as is almost always the case in Impressionist exhibitions, Monet, with works dating from the 1870s to the ’90s, including the almost abstract “La Pointe du Petit Ailly,” a view of a cliff in Normandy modeled in a multitude of pastel colors, and “Nymphéas avec Reflets de Hautes Herbes” (1897), an early view of the lily pads in his watery garden.
Other featured artists include Degas (a previous exhibition in this very museum questioned his bona fides as an Impressionist), represented by several pastels and a couple of paintings and drawings. One of the most curious is the pastel “Après le Bain (Femme Nue Couchée)” (c. 1885-90), an odd image of a nude woman lying on her side in nature in a tortured position with her elongated arm thrown over her face. A number of Renoir’s sugary paintings of young children are also on show, seemingly de rigueur for any exhibition on Impressionism.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (less an Impressionist than a Postimpressionist) is also here, with three marvelous portraits of women (neither performers nor prostitutes, for a change): “A Batignolles” (1888), “Femme Rousse Assise dans le Jardin de Mme. Forest” (1889) and “La Toilette: Madame Fabre (Femme Se Faisant les Mains” (1891). The last-mentioned is an intimate portrait of a friend, casually dressed in a lushly painted robe and nightgown while doing her nails amid the disorder of the artist’s studio.
We then see a group of works by Italian “Impressionists,” the Macchiaioli, little known in France. No fewer than three images of mounted soldiers not in action but standing still, waiting, are by Giovanni Fattori, who had served in the military during the Italian Risorgimento. A lavish portrait of a fur-and-pearls-draped woman, “Signora Diaz Albertini” (1909), is one of many such painted by Giovanni Boldini, who moved to Paris in 1871 and was all the rage in high society for his style of portrait painting.
Departing completely from the show’s theme, a separate section features works by the Symbolists Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon. Their presence is justified by the fact that Redon exhibited in the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874 and that Moreau, who was a beloved professor of art, taught future Impressionist Albert Marquet, as well as Henri Matisse.
In a nod to the real focus of the Nahmad Collection, modernism, the exhibition includes one painting each by Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani (the lovely 1917 portrait “Jeune Fille à la Chemise Rayée”) and Pablo Picasso (a child harlequin).
Like many exhibitions of works from private art collections, this one lacks cohesion and a clear point of view but offers visitors a chance to see a number of handsome works, many of which they may never come across again.
See our list of Current & Upcoming Exhibitions to find out what else is happening in the Paris art world.
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