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Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting
March 4, 2003–June 29, 2003
Special Exhibition Galleries, The Tisch Galleries, 2nd floor
This exhibition examines the impact of Spanish painting on French artists, presenting some 150 paintings by masters of Spain’s Golden Age—Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, El Greco, and Zurbarán—as well as masterpieces by the 19th-century French artists they influenced, among them Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Degas, and, most notably, Manet. An exhibition on this subject has never before been attempted at this scale and depth, and it is indeed revelatory. Napoleon’s Spanish campaigns (1808–14) marked a turning point in the French perception of Spanish painting, which, up to that time, had been virtually ignored and poorly represented in the French royal collections. Yet, only two decades later, in 1838, King Louis Philippe inaugurated the Galerie Espagnole at the Louvre, placing on view his extraordinary collection of hundreds of Spanish paintings. Although this collection was sold in 1853, these paintings left an indelible impression in France and by the 1860s, the French taste for Spanish painting was perceptible at each Paris Salon. In New York, the exhibition also includes works by American artists such as Sargent, Eakins, Whistler, and Cassatt, who studied in France but learned to paint like Spaniards.
Accenture is the proud sponsor of the exhibition.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Musée d'Orsay.
An indemnity has been granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
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