Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile (1870-1904)
Fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain looking at French artists working in Britain in the
late 19th century.
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I have needed a
show looking at this period of the exile from the Franco-Russian War and the
Commune for a while. Lots of the biographies of French artists at the time
mention that they went to England to escape the war but they rapidly move on to
when they returned to France making the time spent here sound like a weekend
break.
Although the main
title of this show mentions the Impressionists they are not the only artists
that the show looks at so don’t expect eight rooms of Monet’s. The first
section does focus on Monet, Pissarro and Sisley along with the art dealer Paul
Durand-Ruel. It does have to be noted though that the term Impressionist was
not applied to them until after this early period of the show. The show also
looks at Alphonse Legros who became a professor at the Slade, the sculptors
Jules Dalou and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.
The artist who
caught my eye most in this show was James Tissot who stayed in Paris during the
war working as a stretcher bearer. There was a harrowing description of an
execution written by him and sketched. He then came to London in 1871 and I’m
not surprised that, after the horrors that he’d seen, he settled into painting
the lovely society/fashion pictures we now know him for. I became slightly obsessed
with a pink and red dress which seemed to appear over and over again including
four times in one picture.
The show also
looked at how French painters painted the atmospheric effects of fog on the
Thames around the turn of the century. This included a number of the pictures
painted by Monet from 1899 to 1901 painting from the Savoy Hotel and a terrace
outside St Thomas’s hospital. Oddly enough, due to a bus diversion, I got
exactly the same view of the Houses of Parliament at dusk.
The final word was
given to Andre Derain who was encouraged by the dealer Ambroise Vollard to
paint London in 1906. His bright, strangely coloured pictures use the same
views as Monet but point to the future of painting.
Closes on 7 May
2018
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