Kunstmuseum Den Haag
New Paris: From Monet to Morisot
When the French President-turned-Emperor Napoléon III decided that his medieval capital should be more like London, his former place of exile, with its grand parks & gardens, tree-lined avenues and modern sewage system, he turned to Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann to get the job done. From 1853 onwards, Haussmann transformed Paris into the city as we know it today, with its large boulevards flanked by imposing buildings with intricate wrought-iron balconies, tall windows and ornate cornices. On display at the Kunstmuseum in The Hague until 9 June, the exhibition New Paris: From Monet to Morisot shows how the impressionists saw their city during & after the years of renovation and places their work in its historical context.
At the heart of the exhibition are three views of Paris that Claude Monet painted from balconies of the Louvre in 1867: the Quai du Louvre, the Church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, and the Jardin de l’Infante. In total, New Paris features 65 works by Monet, Gustave Caillebotte, Auguste Renoir & others that together paint a picture of life in the city — a new city for a new elite. The exhibition shows how Haussmann turned Paris into an enormous building site, and how the former inhabitants of the city fell victim to a process of gentrification. It further looks at the Siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and the subsequent famine, struggle for equality, civil war & reconstruction. Taken as a whole, the exhibition tells a great story with great pictures, offering new perspectives on the history of a city we all love.
www.kunstmuseum.nlReader Comments
Alfred
Most paintings in the exhibition do not show the renovation work itself, but Demolition work in Rue des Franc-Bourgeois St Marcel, by Johan Jongkind, does. It depicts the destruction of a tannery, the Fabrique de Cuirs Forts. Next to Jongkind’s painting is a photo by Charles Marville that shows the Rue des Franc-Bourgeois shortly before the street was knocked down.
Alexander
Palace Garnier was the jewel in the crown of the new Paris, and even though the new opera was still under construction in 1867, its facade was unveiled early, during the World’s Fair that year, to enhance the city’s image as a centre of the arts. The exhibition New Paris shows two works related to the performing arts that I love: Woman Seated in a Loge by Mary Cassatt (c. 1880) and Three Dancers by Edgar Degas (c. 1903).
Colette
I was very pleased to find two of my favourite paintings by Monet in this exhibition: Houses by the Bank of the River Zaan (which are located 434 km north of Paris), and The Tuileries. I had never seen Caillebotte’s views of Rue Halévy — from a balcony and from the sixth floor — or Pissarro’s view of Boulevard Montmartre before, but I believe they capture the 19th-century atmosphere of Paris beautifully.
Margriet
The Tuileries (1876) shows, on the left side, the Pavillon de Flore glistening in the sun, but Monet carefully omitted from view the ruins of the adjoining Tuileries Palace, which was burned down by insurgents of the Paris Commune in 1871 and demolished in 1883. Monet certainly paints an Instagrammable picture of Paris here, but the slums photographed by Charles Marville were as much part of the city as the fashionable areas captured by the impressionists.
Emmanuel
One of the paintings I like best in the exhibition is that of Rue Montorgueil on 30 June 1878, by Monet. It shows a government-declared festival celebrating peace & work, intended as a symbol of France’s recovery after its defeat of 1870, featuring a sea of flags flying in a working-class neighbourhood that had been the scene of heavy fighting during the Commune of Paris of 1871.
Carla
For me, the main highlight of this exhibition is Auguste Renoir’s sun-drenched view of Pont Neuf, from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Fun fact: Among the energetic crowd crossing the bridge is a man who appears twice. Sporting a straw boater and carrying a boulevardier’s cane, this is Renoir’s brother Edmond, dispatched by the artist to delay people on the street. Edmond later explained that while passersby paused to answer his idle questions, Renoir was able to capture their appearance from his window above a café nearby.
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