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Claude to SalvadorMonet to Dalí
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Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Henry Moore. Individually impressive! All are found in the permanent collection of Ohio's Cleveland Museum of Art. |
Currently selected masterworks from this world-class collection are traveling the United States and Canada in a exhibition tour entitled Monet to Dalí Impressionists and Modern Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Pierre Auguste Renoir
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Renoir along with Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Frederic Bazille studied together under French Academic painter Charles Gleyre. They found the restrictions stifling and together journeyed to the Forest of Fontainbleau for inspiration. The Lacaux family were vacationing nearby and commissioned the artist to paint this portrait of their young daughter Romaine. This is believed to be the first painting that Renoir signed. |
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Paul Cézanne
Title: The Brook, c. 1895-1900
Artist: Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906)
Medium: Oil on Fabric
Dimensions: 59.2 x 81 cm.
Permanent Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. 1958.20
© The Cleveland Museum of Art
Image Courtesy: Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Cézanne's admiration for Camille Pissarro led to a joint painting sessions outdoors. Cézanne is considered to be one of the finest of the Post-Impressionist artists, some call him the father of modern painting given his heavy influence on many art movements such as Cubism. Towards the end of his career he leant heavily towards painting landscapes as opposed to portraits or still life works.
Auguste Rodin
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The Burghers of Calais are patriotic heroes in France. During the 100 Years War, King Edward III of England laid siege to the French city of Calais in 1347. After eleven months the people of the city were starving and the city leaders, or Burghers, offered to become the King's hostages to end the siege. |
King Edward agreed but planned to murder the men. Pierre de Wiessant was the third burgher to volunteer for this suicide mission.
Rodin was commissioned to sculpture The burghers of Calais, all six of the men brave enough to volunteer.
King Edward III ordered the burghers to dress simply, wear nooses around their necks and bring the keys of the city of Calais to him. Rodin opted to depict the men in this dress at the moment they were leaving the city going to their fate. Their faces encompass their suffering as they headed to certain death. King Edward's wife Phillippa, a native of France, was pregnant at the time and believed their deaths would be a fatal omen for her unborn child. She persuaded her husband to spare the Burghers.
Rodin's sculptures of the Burghers of Calais were first exhibited at a joint exhibition with Claude Monet at the George Petit Gallery.
Amedeo Modigliani
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Picasso's contemporary Amedeo Modigliani worked both in painting and sculpture. His short life was marked by poverty, alcoholism and drug addiction. His frantic output led to the creation of up to 100 sketches daily. He had great admiration for the works of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Cézanne though Modigliani's style was unique. |
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Pablo Picasso
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Picasso's still life Fan, Salt Box, Melon, isn't exactly still, it is an early Cubist masterpiece. Look at the forms and shapes of the specific objects, the dark green fan is open displaying geometric shapes complimented with the other objects. This exhibit has several Picasso works that include Cubism, his blue period and rose period. |
Salvador Dali
Title: The Dream / (Le Ręve), 1931
Artist: Salvador Dali (Spanish 1904-1989)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 96 x 96 cm
Permanent Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art
John L. Severance Fund 2001.34.
© 2006 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Image Courtesy: Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Salvador Dali must have had some interesting Dreams. Le Ręve is most of a nightmare with the background figure crying blood and the mouth of the foreground figure overrun with ants. At Dali's insistence this painting represented him at the first ever Surrealist exhibit in the summer of 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries in London, England.
Monet to Dali encapsulates so many art periods and brings together works from some of the finest artists ever. Naturally the exhibit has a splendid accompanying catalog. Currently open in Nashville at the Frist it will travel to the Vancouver Art Gallery before it's final showing, together, at it's permanent home: The Cleveland Art Museum
Monet to Dalí
Impressionists and Modern Masterworks
from the Cleveland Museum of Art
Frist Center for the Visual Arts:
February 15, - June 1, 2008
Cleveland Museum of Art:
October 21, 2008 - January 13, 2009
