After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art

Fabulous exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the origins of modern art.

The show traced the period from the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 to the start of the First World War visiting Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, Vienna and Berlin. It is a period I have always been fascinated in.

To some extent it repeated a number of recent shows about the individual artists but it put them in a wider context and traced the narrative between them. I loved the use of portraits of dealers and thinkers to help broaden the story.

It was wonderful to have so many pictures from private collections which I’d never seen rather than just the usual suspects. Special treats included a couple of pictures I didn’t know from Van Gogh’s time in the asylum, Maurice Dennis’s “Homage to Cezanne”, some wonderful Seurat’s and a Picasso Cubist portrait.

The show also set up some interesting unspoken dialogues such as having pictures of girls reading by Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Matisse.

Closes 13 August 2023


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