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Foreword
Malcolm Rogers
Description: Impressions of Light: The French Landscape from Corot to Monet
Impressions of Light: The French Landscape from Corot to Monet
~Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot wrote to a friend in 1827, at the beginning of his career, “I have only one aim in life, which I wish to pursue steadfastly: it is to make landscapes.” Emerging from the revival of landscape art at the end of the eighteenth century, Corot and his colleagues were to revolutionize the depiction of light and nature in...
Author
Malcolm Rogers
PublisherMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston
Copyright© 2002 by Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21131
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Foreword
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot wrote to a friend in 1827, at the beginning of his career, “I have only one aim in life, which I wish to pursue steadfastly: it is to make landscapes.” Emerging from the revival of landscape art at the end of the eighteenth century, Corot and his colleagues were to revolutionize the depiction of light and nature in their time, giving new vitality to a tradition that would culminate in the late Impressionism of Claude Monet after 1900. Impressions of Light: The French Landscape from Corot to Monet explores that great tradition through more than 150 great works from the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
For the first time, this book and the exhibition it accompanies reunite Boston’s impressive holdings of landscape paintings with equally distinguished examples of works on paper: pastels, watercolors, drawings, prints, and a superb selection of photographs. Thanks are due to the team of curators and authors, led by Sue Welsh Reed, George T. M. Shackelford, and Fronia E. Wissman, who have written this thoughtful book and, with the help of many members of the Museum’s staff, produced an equally handsome exhibition.
Among the treasures showcased here are a painting by Corot and three drawings by Jean-François Millet given to the Museum in 1876, the year of its opening. In addition to magnificent gifts and bequests from Boston collectors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we find here purchases made possible by the generosity of many donors to the institution—including, for instance, a noteworthy photograph by Alphonse Jeanrenaud acquired only in 2001. I would like to acknowledge, on behalf of the Museum and the public it serves, our unending gratitude to the men and women who have made this great collection one of the richest of its kind in the world.
In 1926, the year of his death, Claude Monet wrote that “the only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.” We hope that our readers and visitors will take this extraordinary opportunity to study a century of such impressions, to see through the artist’s eyes the splendor of light.
MALCOLM ROGERS
Ann and Graham Gund Director