French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850 – 1950
Courtesy of the Harn Museum of Art
In honor of the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida’s 35th anniversary celebration, the museum is presenting “French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850 – 1950.” The exhibition showcases 56 works, including paintings, drawings, and sculptures, from the Brooklyn Museum’s esteemed collection of European art. The Harn’s presentation of “French Moderns” will also feature Claude Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge,” on loan from the Lowe Art Museum, and “Champ d’avoine” (Oat Field) from the Harn’s collection. The exhibition spans the era between the Revolution of 1848 and the conclusion of World War II—a period marked by significant social, intellectual, and political upheaval in France. This era saw the emergence of avant-garde artistic movements including realism, impressionism, post-impressionism, symbolism, fauvism, cubism and surrealism, which left a lasting impact on the Western artistic tradition. These key movements are represented in the exhibition through remarkable examples by the era’s leading artists, including Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Gabriele Münter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, and others.
Beginning with the landscapes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and the birth of plein air painting, the exhibition surveys the innovative styles and techniques developed by artists from the realism of Gustave Courbet to the surrealism of Yves Tanguy. Varying in scale, style, and media, these diverse works of art explore major new forms of representation and abstraction forged in France over the span of a century. “French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850–1950” is organized into four sections: Landscape, Still Life, Portraits and Figures, and the Nude.
