Updated review of the Seattle Art Museum (15/4/14)

Edouard Vuillard, Salle a manger, Rue de Naples (1935) Seattle Art Museum

April 15, 2014 was the 140th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition that took place in Paris.

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What recently impressed me was the "reconstitution" of the room of 18th/19th century European paintings to house paintings that had been in storage for decades, among which are works by some of the most important names in 19th century art:  Claude Monet (Fishing Boats at Etretat), Edouard Vuillard, Henri Matisse, Berthe Morrisot, Bourguereau, and Gustave Caillebotte, as well as "lesser" figures such as Guillaumin (who exhibited with the other more famous Impressionists).

Nothing prepared me to actually see a large majestic interior by Vuillard, a woman seated at a table, enveloped by that orange-red characteristic of this post-impressionist painter.  I would have thought this had to on loan from the Musee d'Orsay, but all along it was in the collection of SAM!

Louis-Andre-Gabriel Bouchet, Mere et Enfant, 1815.

One criticism has to do with the labelling of the painting by Bouchet (whose name is pronounced the same as the famous Rocco painter Francois Boucher.  The elegantly dressed woman is seated with her two children in a stylized outdoor setting with a pillar upon which the shadow of a man's face appears.  The painting is in a clearly neo-classical style, the dress and relative severity reflecting the movement that swept over France and Europe as a reaction to the Rocco period associated with Louis XV. and as an aesthetic parallel to the era of the French Revolution and its immediate aftermath, the rise and fall of Napoleon.

The date of the painting is 1815.  It is the year, after 22 years of uninterrupted war on the continent (the so-called Napoleonic wars), in which Napoleon Bonaparte is defeated at Waterloo.
And in  that same year the Congress of Vienna reuniting the victors--France's enemies, all of the rest of Europe--will drastically redraw the boundaries of Europe, which will be the national boundaries for the next half century.  

The ensuing restoration of the ancient regime--the Bourbon dynasty--would last until 1830 when the hereditary monarchy was finally abolished.  Being one of the most important dates in European history, surely this fact should have been mentioned on the label, 

The war in which the lady's husband was fighting was not just any war.  It changed the course of Western history.

Granted this fact would be lost on the vast majority of Americans, who would be more familiar with the history of the Jedi, but still...

In truth, 19th century Western art was overwhelmingly dominated by French artists, from the neoclassicism of David through the Barbizon school, realists, romantics, Symbolists, and the post-impressionist movement, its end book-shelved by Henri Matisse, here represented by a small oil of a snowy winter scene with vibrant gum-drop reds.

One even has a wonderful oil painting belonging to the early-mid19th century Barbizon school, the Henri Joseph Harpignies.  Standing in front of it, the viewer really does feel the thick, heavy pull of the current painted in broad reflective brushstrokes.

Henri Harpignies, Fishing Pond, 1866.

Also striking is the 1882 portrait by Caillebotte of a rather anxious woman engulfed in an immense red sofa that makes one think of the famous 1877 painting by Cezanne of his wife. although the proportions are reversed, in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  

A possible reverse inspiration?

http://www1.seattleartmuseum.org/eMuseum/code/emuseum.asp?collection=27168&collectionname=WEB:European&style=browse&currentrecord=1&page=collection&profile=objects&searchdesc=WEB:European&newvalues=1&newstyle=single&newcurrentrecord=75

The walls of  theexhibiton  room is wonderful,are apa a lavender-gray walls and dim, subdued lighting, sufficient to light the individual works of light.

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Personally I found this one room more interesting than the current Miro exhibition, which goes to show you that the size of a show is not necessarily an indication of its richness or significance.

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/So…
http://www.histoirealacarte.com/demos/tome01/


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The inclusion of a mediocre contemporary painting by a young male African-American in the 17th century European gallery is a nod to political correctness more than aesthetic realization, similar to the feeling of deja vu when one sees an African-American in public, dressed from head to foot only in black.   

The statement "What am I doing here?  I'm black.  I don't care what you think.  And I'm bustin' out, get used to it" is a cliche that no longer shocks but produces ennui.