Impressionism Abroad, Boston and French Painting

It was, perhaps, a little unwise to go to an art exhibition when the pupils of my eyes were distended and so that I could not see everything as normal. But I had a routine hospital check-up in the morning (to check my glaucoma hadn’t changed at all – it had not) and before the day it had made sense to me to combine the hospital visit with something pleasant, like a visit to an exhibition in the afternoon. So I chose to go to the exhibition “Impressionism Abroad, Boston and French Painting” in the Jillian and Arthur M Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly, which the Husband and I visited yesterday afternoon. In actual fact I was able to see all the pictures without any difficulty at all. It was just the small plaques beside the pictures with the names of who had donated them that I had difficulty in reading.

Until yesterday I was unaware of the relationship between French and American art during the 19th Century. Many Bostonians developed an enthusiasm for collecting modern art from French and American painters. From the 1840s Bostonians were collecting works from the Barbizon school of painters who were interested in trying to capture everyday rural scenes, together with Impressionist paintings which shared several similarities of subject matter and approach. The Bostonians' fascination in this type of art eventually acted as a catalyst for the setting up of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in about 1870. I believe that virtually all the paintings on display had been leant by the Museum.

I have to admit that I was very impressed (no pun intended) by this exhibition. In just three rooms it had some of the most lovely landscapes and rural scenes that I had seen for a long time. The French paintings were incredible – I was staggered to see twelve Monets (most of them, like the waterlillies and a picture of his wife sewing with a child at her feet, very famous and often seen in reproduction), plus paintings by Degas, Manet and some wonderful Corots. These French paintings were counterpointed by paintings by American artists from the same period. Many of their names and work I had not come across before but many of their paintings gave me real pleasure to look at.

Interestingly I can remember, about a year ago going to an exhibition of works by Raphael at the National Gallery, where everyone was clustering close to the actual pictures to see every small detail. However, with this exhibition yesterday everyone was standing back from each painting, to get the best overall view of the work.

When I had finished looking around I looked in the gallery shop at a book published to go with the exhibition. It had reproductions of all the paintings on show. However, having looked at the vibrancy of the originals the reproductions just looked dead and uninteresting.