Impressionists' gardens of delight promise to be a capital blockbuster

Published on Thursday 3 December 2009 21:29

AN EXHIBITION of Impressionist masterpieces gathered from some of the world's most acclaimed art collections is tipped to become the National Galleries of Scotland's biggest ever summer blockbuster, The Scotsman has learned.

• The Croquet Party, by Manet, will be loaned by Frankfurt's Stdel Museum, one of several galleries around the world contributing works

Impressionist Gardens, which opens on 31 July next year, includes loans of almost 50 paintings by artists including Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.

They are drawn from nearly 40 galleries around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the Tate in London.

The exhibition explores how Impressionist artists and those that followed them in Europe and the United States used and featured gardens in their works, such as Monet's famous Giverny.

The galleries have cautiously estimated that 100,000 people or more will be drawn by a spectacular mix of Impressionist works and gardening artefacts that include contemporary photographs, manuals and journals.

But the continued interest in Impressionism could see the exhibition break the current visitor record of 170,000 on the Mound set by the show, Monet: The Seine and the Sea, in 2003.

"We are hoping our double whammy here is Impressionism plus, of course, an awful lot of people are interested in gardens. This brings those two seemingly different interests together," said the National Galleries of Scotland director, Michael Clarke.

Gardening scenes, he said, "are such a big theme in Impressionism, that hasn't been tackled yet. It's great that we have been given the chance to do it".

Mr Clarke curated the show with Dr Clare Willsdon, an art historian at the University of Glasgow, whose book, In the Gardens of Impressionism, inspired it.

The line-up of international loans for a show four years in the making is striking at a time when tight funding has seen many galleries paring back big exhibitions. Mr Clarke secured key pictures from US galleries before soliciting works from as far afield as Melbourne, Stuttgart and Sheffield.

Impressionist Gardens will also draw on the galleries' own collections to total about 90 works, filling the Royal Scottish Academy building for nearly three months. The roll call of paintings includes ten works by Monet, all loaned; five by Pissarro, and multiple loans of works by Czanne, Renoir, Manet, Bonnard and Sisley.

Highlights include Monet's 1873 painting The Artist's Garden in Argenteuil, and Pissarro's The Artist's Garden at Eragny, both from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Renoir's Woman with a Parasol in a Garden is coming from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid.

The exhibition is being jointly run with the Madrid gallery, in a first-time collaboration agreed three years ago. It will travel on to the Spanish capital after opening in Edinburgh.

"Hopefully it's going to be a show that really cheers you up," said Mr Clarke.