2024-09-28 10:21:35
In the middle of the 19th century, all of Paris was a major construction site. The city manager Baron Haussmann wanted to create a modern metropolis. Impressionist painters knew the limits of his thought.
Young painters often came and went at the Louvre in Paris with their artist cards to study paintings, copy them, and absorb the skills of the old masters from Raphael to Rubens. Of course, this was nothing for Claude Monet, who was on his way to becoming a painter.
The 27-year-old Parisian, who had grown up and studied in Le Havre, had other ideas when, in April 1867, he wrote to the director of the museum Emimilien de Nieuwerkerke asking for access to the balcony of the Louvre: Monet did not want. to copy the manuscripts, but rather paint “Views of Paris”.
You already know what the old city has to offer recently: new lines of sight, unexpected views. The president of the Départment de la Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, was a city planner under Emperor Napoleon III. Cutting roads through Paris, sacrificing medieval neighborhoods to make way for wide boulevards – all of Paris is a major construction site. More light, more air, that is not what the advanced photographers of the time wanted in that time of change, who left the studio in favor of nature.
In this sense, Baron Haussmann’s political work can be seen in line with contemporary impressionism. His distinction in the urban reconstruction of Paris must have inspired the architect Le Corbusier later in the 20th century. (Fortunately, Voisin’s destruction plan was not even implemented.)
In the Alte Nationalgalerie, in the cabinet of the exhibition “Monet and the Impressionist City,” there is a historical map of Paris in which the new roads, boulevards and street intersections established by Haussmann from the 1850s onwards are marked in red. With the help of this construction plan of the construction work from the library of France, the view of Claude Monet can be understood. Monet painted three paintings on the balcony of the Louvre, whose surroundings had been Haussmannized.
Monet, a truly contemporary artist
Oil painting “Jardin de l’Infante”, on loan from The Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio, is one of them: We look southeast over a manicured garden, the tree-lined Quai du Louvre and the Seine beyond. left bank the new boulevards of Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain to the Panthéon, the national hall of fame.
Part of the unusual picture is reminiscent of looking through the lens of a camera or, due to the narrow format, almost of the normal view in the display of a smartphone. One understands that then Monet is what we would call a modern artist – one who captures the spirit of the present and translates it into a picture. At that time, Monet could not have imagined that a few years later the French capital would experience a bloody civil war during the Paris Revolution.
However, it was already clear in 1867 that Impressionism would experience a victory. In the manifesto, the aerialist Frédéric Bazille is quoted as an important witness: “With these people and Monet, the strongest among us, we are sure of success. You will see that everyone will be talking about us.” Bazille did not live to see success;
Director Ralph Gleis said goodbye to the Alte Nationalgalerie
The second image, on loan from The Hague Art Museum, shows almost the same view, but in landscape format. Again we were looking at the Panthéon with Monet, but we had slept more. It is rush hour at the “Quai du Louvre”.
Driving in bicycles, passers-by, studying advertising on advertising columns. Everything is in a fast, painterly style – impressionism, as we know it from landscape paintings, now has urban details. It seems that the city is divided in order to draw attention to the hall of fame, in which Claude Monet has been honored for a long time.
The third balcony painting provides a release for the exhibition because it belongs to the collection of the Berlin National Gallery. His predecessor Hugo von Tschudi recognized early Impressionism as a land style of the late 19th century. He was the first to buy paintings by artists such as Cézanne, Manet and Monet for a museum collection.
“Saint Germain l’Auxerrois” came to Tschudi’s National Gallery in 1906 as a gift from bankers Karl Hagen and Karl Steinbart. The picture shows the former royal church directly opposite the Louvre. To the right, newly built, tall apartment buildings flank the late Gothic church facade. A seemingly unexpected part of the concept is reminiscent of the architectural photographs that were taken in large numbers at the time.
As the basis of the exhibition – at the same time a document of the development of the city of Paris – other paintings by Impressionist painters are gathered around three paintings by Monet from 1867. These include works by Camille Pissarro and Gustave Caillebotte – “master a high view of the urban canyons of Paris,” as the outgoing director of the Alte Nationalgalerie said.
After seven and a half years in Berlin, he will now manage the Albertina in Vienna. With exhibitions focused on the Belgian icon, the painter and curator Caillebotte, the controversial artist Paul Gauguin and the isolation around 1900, he also designed the content of the limited building in the Museum as a successor to Philipp Demandt (now in the Frankfurt Städel ).
Anette Hüsch from the Kunsthalle zu Kiel will follow on the Gleis in 2015. She would like to “further develop the “old” National Gallery, which was once founded as a museum for modern art, from a contemporary perspective. Contemporary painter Monet now shows how this can be achieved.
“Monet and the Impressionist City”until January 25, 2025, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin (catalogue from Hirmer, €29.90)
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