The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a time of great cultural flowering in Germany. In this country, the era is best known through its music, by such great masters as Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Many of the writers that were their contemporaries are also household names; notably Goethe, probably the most dominant European author at the time.

In philosophy, no figures were more influential than Kant and Hegel who completely revolutionized the structure of speculative discourse. This great cultural and intellectual flowering was complemented by a growing sense of national identity.

The new British Museum exhibition Landscape, heroes and folktales: German Romantic prints and drawings, explores the visual arts of this remarkable period which are less well known in the UK. The Napoleonic wars in Europe caused economic ruin. In 1806, Napoleon had forced the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the medieval structure which had held the loose conglomeration of German states and principalities together for centuries. The destruction of the traditional art market caused early nineteenth-century German artists to seek a new identity. Some returned to the values and techniques of medieval and Renaissance art as part of this process, and an enthusiastic study of Dürer’s engravings and the art of Raphael is particularly striking in, for example, the linear style of draughtsmanship of Peter Cornelius, or the work of Friedrich Overbeck, whose composition, Italia and Germania, epitomised the mood of the period.

Schnorr von Carolsfeld spent most of his life working on designs for an ambitiously illustrated Picture Bible, all deeply imbued with Raphael’s style. The most striking prints of the period were made in the recently-invented technique of lithography, such as the Portrait of the Eberhard brothers by Johann Anton Ramboux, or the beautiful set of landscapes of days of the week showing views around Salzburg by Ferdinand Olivier. A surge of interest in landscape is a dominant feature of this period. In contrast to Italianate classical views so typical of the eighteenth century, delicate studies of plants and trees and large prints and drawings of a rugged countryside reveal a much deeper interest in Germanic landscape. A group of wildlife watercolours by Wilhelm Tischbein, the artist best known for his close friendship with Goethe, are remarkable for their freshness; and etchings by the school teacher and philologist, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe, show idyllic scenes of lovers in verdant woodland glades. The greatest and rarest of German romantic prints, The Four Times of Day of 1805 by Philipp Otto Runge will be framed on the wall at the entrance of the exhibition.

Wayne Thiebaud may seem several worlds away from the innovations that made Picasso the man to beat for ambitious painters for half a century. But Thiebaud's "Dark Land" (1997), an elevated fantasy view of farmland and river, toys with vanishing points and depictive paradox in ways even Picasso might recognize as distant echoes of cubism.

One passage in the show begins with still lifes,




"Scissors" (1959)



and "Knife and Tomato" (1963), by Richard Diebenkorn,


flanking David Bates'"Purple Iris" (1997), which ruggedly evokes van Gogh and features a knife that recalls the lore of van Gogh's self-mutilation.

On the same wall, the eye goes immediately to Rebecca Horn's motorized sculpture "The Polish Sisters" (1994), in which a yardstick swings below from wires hooked to upright pairs of snipping scissors.

Alongside the Horn hangs Jim Dine's "The Yellow Painting" (1972-73), in which real tools, including bolt-cutters and pliers, suggest characters in some cryptic allegory of studio life.

William Bailey's "Still Life Torre" (1984) serves as a classical coda to this rambunctious sequence. Its depicted shelf, crowded with bowls and other vessels, rhymes with the real shelf Dine attached to his painting.

Other affinities among works on view declare themselves less openly or less suggestively. The soft rectangles that fill Sean Scully's sumptuous painting "Pink Wall of Light" (2002) echo the uncarved top halves of the square cedar beams in Ursula von Rydingsvard's sculpture "Pink Companion" (1991), standing nearby.

The rounded bottom profile of


Robert Mangold's shaped abstraction "X Series -- Central Diagonal 1 (A)" (1968)

rhymes with the curve of the string that drapes across



Jasper Johns' painting "Bridge" (1997).

The two pictures, which hang side by side, have diamond shapes in common as well, though little comes of these resemblances.

I’ve been through the show Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde (which opens o the public tomorrow) and it is amazing, a must see. It is a great collection of masterworks such as...



the Art Institute’s Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso.

There are countless major works,




A Modern Olympia, along with Paul Cézanne’s other motifs of bathers, apples, and mountain views. Gauguin’s Breton and Tahiti periods, Picasso’s birth of cubism, Aritside Maillol’s voluptuous nudes, the Nabis, the Fauves and more. It is really a rare opportunity to see all this in one place...

With masters like these, we have cultural amnesia. We take for granted that these pictures are masterpieces and that they all belong in museums. When in reality, they started out hated and unpopular. In hindsight, we read the story backwards, beginning with the knowledge that these are all great artists; their stories myths that we know will have happy endings. But Vollard and visionaries like him were essential to getting these artists’ work out to the public. Art is not a solitary endeavor, it takes a structure. Artists, collectors, dealers, institutions all play a part in bringing work to the viewer. Ambroise Vollard is one of the dealers that provided a forum for artists to communicate. Vollard was not just someone peddling paintings, he maintained a dialogue with his artists, introduced them to one another, supported them, and encouraged them to try new things. Vollard often took risks, at significant financial losses, especially in terms of his prodigious output of publications, including prints and books. This is what makes the exhibition so interesting. It tells more of the story of Modern Art than just famous painters hanging out together; it establishes the roles so many different characters played in each other’s lives.

This exhibition's collection of works by Gauguin is most impressive. An archetypal dropout, he left the world of high finance and bourgeois security to begin a career in painting. Part-Peruvian, he soon began to search for his primitive roots in Brittany and continued his mission in exotic Tahiti. In the provocative


Image © Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Used with permission
Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903)
Manao tupapau (Spirit of the
Dead Watching), 1892
Oil on burlap mounted on canvas
28 1/2 x 36 3/8 in. (72.4 x 92.4 cm)
A. Conger Goodyear Collection, 1965
1965:1
© Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Spirits of the Dead Watching (1892), Gauguin chipped below the surface, revealing the psychological fears of an adolescent girl at the moment of her sexual awakening and the realization of her own mortality.

Included in the show are some woodcuts, decorative pots and stoneware by the artist.



The Nightmare (ca. 1899-1900)



and Crouching Tahitian Woman (1899)

(images added) are two startling drawings that give the viewer the opportunity to witness Gauguin's creative process in his innovative technique of transfer drawing.

Sensation

Impressionism derives its name from Monet's painting Impression, soleil levant (1872); the name was first used mockingly by a journalist, but was soon adopted as a badge of pride. These artists rendered their fleeting impressions in vibrant colours for the pure pleasure of painting. They had no use for lofty ideas and worked in the open air under ever-changing light. The Impressionists brought a breath of fresh air to the stuffy art world of their day. Their subjects are easy to appreciate. Along with city scenes and landscapes, they often depicted the most charming aspects of everyday bourgeois life: Paris cafés and boulevards, seaside excursions, informal portraits, and rowing trips just outside town. The revolutionary ideas of this new generation clashed with the reigning academic tradition. Their colourful ‘impressions’ were seen as shocking and radical, and at first they were frequent targets of ridicule. Yet their radical approach to style, technique, and subject matter proved deeply inspiring to many artists. They ushered in a new perspective on reality, a new concept of beauty, a new era.

Inspiration

Impressionism began as a response to the classicism of the Paris Salon, an annual exhibition of officially selected art. The exponents of this style painted precisely as artists were expected to paint: carefully staged scenes with crisp outlines and an eye for detail. Their subjects were mythological, historical, or religious. The most prominent artists in the neo-classicist tradition were

Alexandre Cabanel (1823–89), Portrait of Countess Elizaveta A. Vorontsova-Dashkova [Portrait de la comtesse Élisabeth Vorontsova-Dachkova], 1873. Oil on canvas, 99 х 73 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), The Sale of a Female Slave in Ancient Rome, 1884. Oil on canvas, 92 х 74 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Lion Hunt in Morocco [Chasse aux lions au Maroc], 1854. Oil on canvas, 74 x 92 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The exhibition placed the Impressionists in the company of their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, including both kindred spirits and competing movements. Favourites like

Claude Monet (1840–1926), Woman in a Garden [Dame au jardin], 1867. Oil on canvas, 82.3 x 101.5 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The visual arts too were going through door spectacular developments in France, although the pace of change was initially slow. Aside from the Romantic school (represented by artists such as Eugène Delacroix), this was also the heyday of Neoclassicism (Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean-Paul Laurens) and Realism (Jean-Baptiste Corot, Jean François Millet). The artists who had been trained at the leading art academies painted everything exactly as they envisaged it in their imagination. Mythological, Biblical and historical tales and events were the most prestigious subjects. Any artist wanting to establish his name would try to exhibit his work in the annual Salon. This meant submitting it to the scrutiny of the jury, the members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, who applied strict selection criteria. The jury defined what was to be deemed ‘beautiful’, and looked askance at free spirits. The jury could make or break an artist’s career.

Édouard Manet quarrelled on more than one occasion with the Salon jury, which rejected some of his paintings for failure to meet the set criteria. As time went on, the young artists made their protests heard more loudly. In 1863, when over half of the entries were rejected, the situation escalated to the extent that Emperor Napoleon III was obliged to intervene. The result was an alternative exhibition featuring work that had failed to please the jury: the ‘Salon des Refusés’. But many rejected artists declined to take part, reasoning that building up a reputation as an outcast was a poor career move.

Manet did exhibit his paintings at the Salon des Refusés, and his



Déjeuner sur l’herbe


(which today hangs in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris) provoked an immediate outcry. Visitors were aghast to find themselves face to face with a nude lady – not even a Greek goddess – depicted sitting in a mundane park picnicking with two gentlemen clad in elegant suits, all painted in a multitude of bright dots of colour. The public thought the work a disgrace. Yet this Salon des Refusés became a breeding ground in the Paris art world for a new, ambitious group of painters.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Head of a Woman [Tête de femme], c 1876. Oil on canvas, 38.5 x 36 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Fleeting impressions

It was in 1874 that the young renegades made their collective presence felt in public for the first time. Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (who had started his career by painting porcelain tea-cups) organised an exhibition in the studio of the photographer Paul Nadar, in which an amazing 31 painters took part. They included Claude Monet and his teacher Eugène Boudin. Paul Cézanne submitted his House of the Hanged Man. Alfred Sisley was represented with a landscape, and Camille Pissarro with his gardens in Pontoise. Other exhibitors included Berthe Morisot (the only woman) and Georges Seurat. Degas hoped, he wrote in a letter, that they would ‘get a few thousand people to sit up and take notice’.

In this objective, they succeeded gloriously. But they also unleashed a harsh, dismissive response from the critics. The journalist Louis Leroy, after visiting the show, dashed off a scornful review in the daily press. He reserved his most withering remarks for Monet’s Impression, soleil levant (1872): ‘Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape’. He went on to brand Monet and the rest a bunch of ‘impressionists’. The word stuck: the artists themselves soon adopted it as a proud sobriquet. They saw Manet as their primary source of inspiration, although he refused to call his work impressionist.

Most of the visitors left the exhibition in a state of shock, having completely failed to comprehend the style of these painters. The impressionists had sparked a scandal. In their work, it was not the subject they depicted that mattered most, but the fleeting impression of that subject, painted in bright colours, in short, rapid strokes placed alongside each other. The rendering of natural light figured prominently in this approach.

Claude Monet (1840–1926), Corner of a Garden at Montgeron [Un coin de jardin à Montgeron], 1876. Oil on canvas, 175 x 194 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The Impressionists did not work in stuffy studios like the Salon artists, but went outside and painted in the open air, like the Barbizon painters (whose brown and green landscapes, painted from life, were also turned away by the Salon jury). By this time, painting en plein air had become easier, since tubes of ready-made paint were available, and pre-primed canvases could be purchased, already stretched on timber frames.

New view of the world

The Impressionists’ subjects were also different from those of their predecessors. They took no interest in depicting a Lion hunt (above) such as the one by Delacroix in 1854, or Peasant woman guarding her cow near the woods, painted in 1865-1870 by the Realist Corot.



Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796–1875), Peasant Girl Grazing a Cow at the Forest [Paysanne gardant sa vache a la lisière d'un bois]. 1865–1870. Oil on canvas, 47.5 x 35 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Instead, they painted everyday scenes showing the new bourgeoisie that had been emerged in the industrial revolution: rowing trips and seaside outings, people walking along the banks of the Seine, parading along the boulevard, and enjoying Parisian night life. They were also fascinated by the constant changes of atmosphere in the natural world and the city. For the rest, the impressionists did not seek to convey any message with their work.

Take the painting Woman in the garden by Monet (1867),(above) featured in the exhibition at the Hermitage Amsterdam. It shows a woman, seen from behind. It does not matter who she is; Monet is not interested in conveying her character. Her white dress and parasol do tell us something – about the fashions of the day, for instance. But the atmosphere of this painting is determined mainly by the effect of the sunlight and the sections left in the shade, and the subtle colour distinctions between them. Your first impression is always the most important, say the Impressionists. But we are also struck by the sheer cheerfulness, the carefree beauty – beauty for its own sake. The emphasis was no longer on what was depicted, but on how it was painted. It was a new look at the world.

For a better understanding of the sensation that the Impressionists caused in the late nineteenth century, from our vantage point in 2012 – no simple matter, since today Impressionism is universally accepted and admired – the exhibition in the Hermitage Amsterdam goes back to that time. It returns to the age in which those revolutionary painters first stirred up controversy. That is why, in this exhibition, the impressionist paintings and drawings of Monet, Sisley, Pissarro and Renoir were hung alongside the Salon art of their contemporaries.

Edmond-Georges Grandjean (1844–1908), View of the Champs-Élysées from the Place de l'Étoile in Paris [L’avenue des Champs- Élysées, vue de la place de l’ Étoile], 1878. Oil on canvas, 85.5 х 136.5 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Look at the more traditional painting View of the Champs-Elysées from the Place de l'Étoile in Paris (1878) by Edmond-Georges Grandjean and compare it to the Impressionist Place du Théâtre Français in Paris (1898) by Pissarro or The River Banks at Saint-Mammès (1884) by Sisley. The differences are immediately obvious. It is the apparent reality versus an impression of the reality. Precision versus the ephemeral.

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), Place du Théâtre Français, Paris [Place du Théâtre Français], 1898. Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 81.5 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Alfred Sisley (1839–99), River Banks at Saint-Mammès [Berges de la rivière à Saint-Mammès], 1884. Oil on canvas, 50 x 65 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Or take the Portrait of Countess Elizabeth Vorontsova-Dashkova (1873) by Cabanel,

Alexandre Cabanel (1823–89), Portrait of Countess Elizaveta A. Vorontsova-Dashkova [Portrait de la comtesse Élisabeth Vorontsova-Dachkova], 1873. Oil on canvas, 99 х 73 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Gallery owner Durand-Ruel

The eventual breakthrough and success of Impressionism were largely thanks to the efforts of the Parisian gallery-owner Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922). He saw something in those paintings that no one else was yet able to see. He purchased them to enable his protégés to carry on working – and to give them something to live on. Reselling them was not always possible, and more than once he was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was not until he opened branches in London, Brussels and New York, and tapped into a new group of collectors, that the Impressionists conquered the world. He was the first gallery owner who succeeded in selling a new ‘school’. ‘Without Durand-Ruel’, said Renoir, generous as ever, ‘we would not have survived and caviar would have been a good deal rarer.’

Among Durand-Ruel’s more important clients were the Russians Mikhail (1870-1903) and Ivan Morozov (1871–1921) and Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936). These fabulously wealthy textile merchants from Moscow bought work by the French Impressionists – Sisley was Morozov’s favourite artist – from a desire to inject new vitality into the art of their own country. They dared to take the rebellious French paintings to Russia and to display them in their own homes so that young Russian artists could see what was happening in Paris, the beating heart of European art. And they could draw inspiration from it. Most of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings that were on view at the museum came from the collections of these two great art lovers.

Charles-François Daubigny (1817–78), The Pond [L’Étang], 1858. Oil on canvas, 57.5 x 93.5 cm © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The Impressionists were a source of inspiration for numerous painters. One of them was Dutch – Vincent van Gogh. It is well known that upon arriving in Paris in 1886, Van Gogh immediately fell under the spell of the Impressionists. He made their acquaintance through his brother Theo, who ran an art gallery. It was in their work that he found the sunlight and the colours he had been looking for. In a letter to a friend he wrote: ‘In Antwerp I did not even know what the Impressionists were, now I have seen them and . . . I have much admired certain Impressionist pictures.’ He incorporated their ideas and techniques into his work in an entirely individual fashion.

Jean-Paul Laurens (1838–1921), Emperor Maximilian of Mexico before his Execution [L’empereur Maximilien du Mexique avant son exécution], 1882. Oil on canvas, 224.5 x 302.5 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Girl with a Fan [Jeune femme à l’éventail], 1880. Oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Claude Monet (1840–1926), Meadows at Giverny [Les prairies à Giverny], 1888. Oil on canvas, 92.5 x 81.5 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Benjamin Constant (1845–1902), Portrait of Mrs Marina S. Derwis [Portrait de Mme Marina Sergeievna von Derwis], c 1899. Oil on canvas, 133.5 х 100 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg




Alphonse Marie de Neuville (Deneuville, 1835–85), Street in an Old Town [Rue de la vieille ville], 1873. Oil on panel, 51 х 34.5 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Alphonse Marie de Neuville (Deneuville, 1835–1885), Champigny (een zolder in Champigny, 2 december 1870) [Champigny (Le grenier à Champigny le 2 décembre 1870)], 1875. Olieverf op doek, 51 х 74,5 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Eugène Fromentin (1820–76), Thieves in the Night [Voleurs de nuit], 1868. Oil on canvas, 115 х 167 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Child with a Whip [Enfant au fouet], 1885. Oil on canvas, 105 x 75 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Banks of the Marne [Les bords de la Marne], 1888–90. Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 81.3 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg



Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Fatata Te Moua (At the Foot of a Mountain) [Fatata te Mouà (Au pied de la montagne)], 1892. Oil on canvas, 68 x 92 cm
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Bridging the space between poetry, politics and spirituality, Chagall creates rich visual tapestries, alive with tales of love, loss, war, faith and flying fiddlers.

“The Fall of the Angel”

follows several paintings of isolated men, like “Sleeping Talmudist”



and “Solitude.”

Like them, it includes an observant Jewish figure — here, a man clutching a Torah scroll in the foreground — but also features a small Jesus on the cross along the right edge.

That peripheral image sets the stage for a gallery of Crucifixion paintings that are astonishingly varied. There are figures with Byzantine-style halos, as in



“Exodus” (1952-66).

“Christ in the Night” (1948) looks like a medieval woodcut or a painting by Georges Rouault.

And there is a self-portrait as Jesus, “Descent from the Cross” (1941), in which the letters “MARC CH” replace the traditional “INRI” on the cross, and an angel holds a palette and brush.

[A later version :]



Marc Chagall's 'Descent From the Cross' (1968-76)

There is even a Cubo-Futurist Jesus,



“Calvary,”

from MoMA’s collection. Painted in 1912, it demonstrates that Chagall’s interest in Jesus went back to his formative years in Paris, where he developed a style that merged Russian icon painting with Cubism and Fauvism. The Jesus of “Calvary” wasn’t a political figure so much as a familial one. He later recalled, “I wanted to show Christ as an innocent child,” and compared the figures at the base of the cross to his own parents.

In his wartime works, there is no mistaking the symbolism of Jesus as a Jewish martyr.



“White Crucifixion” (1938), not in the show but in the catalog, is typical; Jesus is ringed by burning pogroms.

In the smaller gouache “The Crucified,” Chagall responds to news accounts of a battle in his Byelorussian birthplace, Vitebsk, with images of Jewish villagers nailed to crosses...

"The Yellow Crucifixion" (1943) was one of several paintings Chagall did during this period in which he attempted to express the horror of the Holocaust by using the image of the crucified Christ in combination with overtly Jewish symbols. In this way, he linked Jesus to the fate of the Jewish victims of Hitler and used the most powerful image of suffering in the Christian iconographic tradition to confront viewers with the cruelties being inflicted on Jesus's people.

In "The Yellow Crucifixion," Jesus wears the phylacteries or tefillin donned by Orthdox Jews for their morning prayers. The off-center figure of the crucified Jesus shares the central space of the picture with a large depiction of a Torah scroll. In the lower part of the picture, burning buildings and figures in postures of agony represent the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Chagall's native eastern Europe.

Chagall's crucifixion paintings probably inspired the plot of Chaim Potok's popular novel, My Name is Asher Lev (1972), in which the principal character is a young Jewish artist grappling with the fact that the western artistic tradition is so heavily influenced by Christian imagery and that the crucifixion image is a uniquely powerful way of expressing human suffering.

Chagall, who was raised in a Hasidic home, had his own doubts about using Christian imagery, at various points consulting the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Israeli president Chaim Weizmann on the matter. But in the end, he kept painting Jesus, attracted to his qualities as a rebel, a martyr, and a creative spirit. In some paintings, the man on the cross is the artist himself.

Chagall described the act of painting Jesus as “an expression of the human, Jewish sadness and pain which Jesus personifies,” he explained. “…Perhaps I could have painted another Jewish prophet, but after two thousand years mankind has become attached to the figure of Jesus.”

Audio Guide
Produced by The Jewish Museum in association with Acoustiguide, a random access audio guide is being created for Chagall: Love, War, and Exile. Available to visitors for $5.00, the audio guide is being made possible by Bloomberg.

About The Jewish Museum
Widely admired for its exhibitions and collections that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is one of the world's preeminent institutions devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary. Located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, The Jewish Museum organizes a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed and award-winning temporary exhibitions as well as dynamic and engaging programs for families, adults, and school groups. The Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains a collection of 25,000 objects - paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ritual objects, and broadcast media.

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