June 18 through September 8, 2002
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall
Monday, June 17, 2002; 10 a.m.-noon
Eighty–four paintings — including landmark works of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as well as masterpieces from the Golden Age of Danish painting — all from the Ordrupgaard Collection in Copenhagen, Denmark, are featured in this exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. On view June 18 through September 8, 2002,
The Age of Impressionism: European Painting from the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen offers a dazzling survey of this remarkable collection, including works by Cézanne, Corot, Courbet, Degas, Delacroix, Eckersberg, Gauguin, Købke, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley, among others. Assembled by the Danish insurance magnate Wilhelm Hansen (1868-1936), both the collection and the country house from which it derives its name were bequeathed to the Danish State upon the death of Hansen's wife, Henny, in 1951.
The exhibition is made possible in part by the Janice H. Levin Fund.
Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented on the exhibition: "It is a privilege to present these superb paintings from the Ordrupgaard Collection to American audiences, who may be unaware that one of the most representative collections of 19th–century French and Danish paintings exists on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Each splendid picture in the exhibition — be it a brilliant pastel by Degas, a Parisian streetscape by Pissarro, or a luminous view of Rome by Eckersberg — represents these artists at their highest level of accomplishment. The works also reveal Wilhelm Hansen's enduring passion for the finest painting of both his fellow Danes and the French masters who were radically altering Western art during his own lifetime."
Mr. de Montebello continued: "The Ordrupgaard exhibition is at the Metropolitan at a particularly auspicious time, as it coincides with another special exhibition in our galleries, Gauguin in New York Collections: The Lure of the Exotic. The eight exceptional Gauguins in the Ordrupgaard Collection brings the total number of works by the artist to nearly 130 at the Metropolitan this summer."
The Age of Impressionism: European Painting from the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen is organized chronologically with works by French and Danish artists exhibited separately. Eugène Delacroix's Portrait of George Sand (1838) and Honoré Daumier's Street Scene, Paris (1845–48) are among the earliest French works included in the exhibition. Eight pictures by Edgar Degas include several pastels, such as Three Dancers (ca. 1898) and the pastel and gouache Study for "The Bellelli Family" (1859), an early version of the famous canvas in the Musée d'Orsay.
Landscapes, river views, and scenes of urban life are especially well represented in the Ordrupgaard Collection. From Alfred Sisley's Factory on the Banks of the Seine, Bougival (1873) to Camille Pissarro's Rue Saint–Lazare, Paris (1897), many corners of the French countryside and capital are on view in the exhibition. The brilliant, dappled sunshine of an early Monet, The Chailly Road through the Forest of Fontainebleau (1865), contrasts in terms of technique and atmospheric mood with the artist's later painting, Waterloo Bridge, Overcast (1903).
Paul Gauguin is represented by eight works spanning nearly his entire career and most of his voyages. They range from the tender depiction of his daughter in Paris, The Little Dreamer, Study of the Artist's Daughter Aline, Rue Carcel (1881) to Landscape at Pont–Aven, painted in Brittany (1888); Blue Tree Trunks, Arles (1888), from his stay with Van Gogh in the south of France; and Adam and Eve (1902), painted in the South Pacific just a year before the artist's death. Gauguin's engaging, unforgettable, Portrait of a Young Girl Vaïte (Jeanne) Goupil (1896), who was the daughter of a French merchant in Tahiti, is the only known portrait commission ever undertaken by the artist.
The paintings in the exhibition by Danish artists of the Golden Age reflect a different sensibility and technical virtuosity from that of the Impressionists, though the Danes were just as interested in the depiction of sunlight and other atmospheric effects. An early work by C.W. Eckersberg, View of the Colonnade, St. Peter's Square, Rome (1813–16), was painted during the artist's three years of study in Italy and underscores the allure that Rome, with its classical architecture and golden sunlight, held for Eckersberg and many other artists of the era.
Nineteenth-century Danish artists were no less enamored of the landscape than the French Impressionists, as seen in such works as Christen Købke's View of Dosseringen, Copenhagen, Study of Willow Scrub in the Foreground (ca. 1837) and L.A. Ring's Motif from Melby, Early Spring (1901). Six paintings by Vilhelm Hammershøi, including Young Woman Sewing, the Artist's Sister Anna Hammershøi (1887) and Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunlight, Interior of the Artist's Home (1900), reveal the impact that the "rediscovery" of Vermeer had on many late-19th-century artists.
The Age of Impressionism: European Painting from the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen and distributed by Yale University Press.
At the Metropolitan, the exhibition is organized by Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator of European Paintings, and Rebecca A. Rabinow, Assistant Research Curator in the Department of European Paintings.
Prior to the Metropolitan's presentation, the exhibition was on view at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Afterward, it will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
###
June 3, 2002
Press resources