LIVERPOOL.- Renoir, Monet, Degas and Rodin are amongst some of the artists to be featured in a significant new exhibition for 2009 at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

In an international exchange made possible by the generous loan of works from the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, French Impressionists will run from 20 February to 31 May at the Port Sunlight gallery famed for its own extensive collection of British Art.

The small but exceptional exhibition displays wonderful examples of the French Impressionists’ achievements through a selection of 13 treasured works from National Museums Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery collection and Sweden’s premier museum of art and design. Sandra Penketh, head of the Lady Lever said:

“The artists’ abilities to capture colour, light, atmosphere and movement is a style that is still much admired today. The exhibition is unique to the Lady Lever and provides a rare opportunity to see pieces usually only on display in Sweden’s capital. We feel privileged to be sharing works by some of the most admired artists of the modern age with our visitors, in this intimate study of the French Impressionists.”

Disillusioned with traditional academic training, the Impressionists of 19th century Paris strove to develop their own painting techniques and new subject matter in a bid to challenge their contemporaries. Inspired by light, colour and texture they were able to bring everyday scenes to life, and set themselves apart from the art establishment of the time.

The Impressionists changed landscape painting, moving from the studio to paint en plein air – outdoors – to study the effects of light, weather and atmosphere on a scene. The landscapes of Monet, Sisley and Seurat displayed together for the first time in the exhibition, illustrate their new representations of landscape, capturing the ‘sensation’ of each view on the canvas.

Works including Monet’s Break-up of ice on the Seine and Sisley’s On the Shores of the Loing, demonstrate perfectly the skill of Impressionists in recording the subtle atmosphere in scenes of water and snow, favoured for their soft light and reflective surfaces.

Contemporary life was also recorded in the works of the Impressionists, as they moved away from the historical, literary and religious subjects advocated by the academic teaching establishments to depict the many aspects of urban life.
The figure studies of Renoir, Degas, Vuillard and Bonnard in the exhibition conjure up scenes of café society, theatres, friends, family and the working people of Paris, portraying an air of informality and distinguishing them from the formal work of their conventional contemporaries.

Renoir’s Young Parisian Lady and Degas’ Woman Ironing display the studied female form and personalities that inspired so many of the masters of the period. Expertly capturing everyday occasions and the movement associated with domestic chores, Degas’ painting also reacquaints the viewer with the artist’s lesser known laundress paintings, studying the movements of 19th century Parisian women at work.

French Impressionists at the Lady Lever also considers the artists’ interest in movement, drama and surface pattern through sculpture, while a section on the influence of graphic art, in particular Japanese prints, reveals how a craze for this style of art swept Paris in the 1860s and inspired Impressionists at the time.
A selection of bronze sculptures includes two pieces from the Walker Art Gallery by Rodin. Often considered to be the father of modern sculpture, Rodin was the only sculptor to exhibit with the Impressionists. The loans from the Nationalmuseum Stockholm also include two examples of Degas’ work in sculpture from his famous ballet dancer series.Sandra continues:

“Untrained as a sculptor and with little technical knowledge, most people are unaware that Degas actually worked on sculpture for twenty years. He only ever exhibited one work publicly and treated his sculptures as private experiments that were shown to friends and studio visitors, so people may be surprised to unearth this somewhat ‘hidden’ talent.”

The exhibition is a result of a collaboration between National Museums Liverpool and Nationalmuseum Stockholm. A number of the Lady Lever Art Gallery’s key Pre-Raphaelite paintings will be on display in Stockholm in the exhibition The Pre-Raphaelites during February and May.