Impressionable Youth

Themes of childhood and family recur in nineteenth-century French Impressionist painting, from Berthe Morisot’s experimental self-portraits with her daughter Julie Manet, to Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s everyday scenes of his three sons and their nanny. Drawing primarily upon works from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, this lecture will closely…

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Armchair Adventures: Henri Rousseau and His Fantastical Landscapes

Join Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator and Manager, Statewide Programs and Exhibitions, as he explores the unique life and work of the French artist, Henri Rousseau. The essentially self-taught painter created cityscapes and portraits as well as dream-like exotic jungle scenes without stepping out of the city. During his lifetime his work was ridiculed by…

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Politics and Painting: French Art Movements of the 19th Century

France was the most advanced and most prosperous country in the world during the 19th century. It was also dynamic and politically unstable, undergoing four changes of constitution before 1900. The visual arts, and in particular painting, played an important role in the social turmoil of the French republic. Controversies about social class, gender, and economic equity played out in art as much as in the press. This lecture explores many of these topics and the painters who alternately championed or turned their backs on the great causes of their time — including David, Delacroix, Courbet and Manet.

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Berthe Morisot and the Impressionist Image of Women

Berthe Morisot was a woman of extraordinary talents who carved a career for herself out of the male-dominated art world of 19th century Paris. She was one of only a few women who exhibited with both the Paris Salon and the highly influential and innovative Impressionists. Morisot’s art depicts the world of the bourgeoisie: their clothes, their lifestyle, their surroundings, and their relationships. Through her unusual talent, the modern viewer can see the essence of quotidian life for the rising middle class of 19th century Paris.

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An Album of a Century: Photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue

French photographer and painter Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) is most famous for his stunning photos of automobile races, planes, and fashionable Parisian women from the turn of the century. This lecture explores Lartigue’s photographs from his first sincere, often playful, presentation of friends, family, and French society made as early as age 6 to his later fashion layouts and portraits.

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