Between the ever-escalating number of impressionist exhibitions worldwide and the skyrocketing value of the much-coveted works in the style, securing exhibition loans has gone from difficult to nearly impossible.
Given this tall challenge, Timothy Standring takes great pride in the quantity and quality of such pieces the Denver Art Museum was able to borrow for “Inspiring Impressionism,” a large-scale exhibition opening Saturday.
Through a combination of contacts, cajoling and persistence, the Gates Foundation curator of painting and sculpture and his collaborators were able to obtain more than 100 loans from 70 public and private collections worldwide.
The lenders range from the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and include such heavy-hitters as the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay in Paris, Tate in London and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The key to such success, Standring said, was getting these institutions to buy into the theme of this largely unprecedented show, which explores the links in subject matter and style between the old masters and impressionists.
“If it were not based on the thesis of the exhibition,” he said, “they’d smile and they’d have a lovely dinner with you and slap you on the back and say, ‘We’ll consider it.’
“And, then, we’d be getting a resounding ‘no’ rejection letter.”
He acknowledges some disappointments, such as not persuading the Courtauld Institute of Art in London to part with its smaller, freer version of Edouard Manet’s celebrated masterpiece, “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe.” But the victories offset such setbacks.
On view will be paintings and drawings by such celebrated artists as Mary Cassatt, Paul Cezanne, Jean-Simeon Chardin, Edgar Degas, El Greco, Frans Hals, Claude Lorrain, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Peter Paul Rubens and Titian.
Other recent Denver Art Museum exhibitions have contained major impressionist works, including “El Greco to Picasso From The Phillips Collection” in 2003. But this show offers the most comprehensive look at the late 19th- and early 20th-century movement since 1999.
And unlike those offerings, this one was organized by the Denver Art Museum, a daunting undertaking for a regional institution with a relatively minor collection of impressionist and old-master works.
“It was a reach,” Standring said. “It was ambitious, but these are the kinds of exhibitions that the Denver Art Museum should be doing.”
In popular mythology, the impressionists are depicted as radicals who rejected the academy and everything that came before them, but this is only partially true.
While they did rebel against certain academic precepts, they also spent a great deal of time looking at past masters. This show offers a comprehensive and, in many cases, new look at such connections with an array of specific examples.
“One of the great contributions of the exhibition is that hundreds of thousands of visitors will go away and say, ‘Impressionism is a little more complex than I really thought it to be,’ and that’s great,” Standring said.
The beginnings of “Inspiring Impressionism” date to 1999 when Standring engaged Ann Dumas as co-curator. The Degas expert and consulting curator at the Royal Academy of Arts in London edited the show’s 280-page catalog ($65 hardcover, $35 softcover), with hers and eight other essays, and more than 200 color illustrations.
Around the same time, the leaders of the Denver Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum and High Museum of Art in Atlanta agreed in principle to collaborate on the project. Those institutions shared “Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums,” which traveled to Denver in 1999.
But the show could proceed only if Stranding and Dumas were able to land the necessary loans. Making that task even more difficult was the need in each case for not just any great work by Rubens or Monet but one that demonstrated a specific point the curators wanted to make.
A prime example was their quest for one of three paintings by Cezanne that include depictions of a plaster sculpture of a putto (a plump boy angel or cherub) originally believed to be by Pierre Puget but now attributed to Francois Du Quesnoy (1594-1643).
Standring first approached Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum, which owns a loosely rendered version titled “Plaster Cast of a Putto” (circa 1894-95), but the institution had a moratorium on loans at the time.
So, the curator next contacted the Courtauld Institute, which owns “Still Life With Cherub” (1895), an oil painting on paper, which was in turn mounted on canvas. But, it, too, said no, citing its rule of not lending works on paper.
That left the third version, “Still Life With Statuette” (1894-95), at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden.
“So, I had to go to Stockholm, and after the second meeting that we went to, they finally agreed to loan that,” Standring said.
In fact, the leaders of the Swedish museum were so enthusiastic about the show that they ultimately lent six works in all.
Strandring hopes “Inspiring Impressionism” will generate similar excitement among visitors, and he’s confident it will.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
A second impression: floral exhibit
After “Inspiring Impressionism” closes in May, fans should not have to wait too long for another major exhibition examining the movement.
“A Passion for Flowers: Painting in France From Courbet to Monet,” which is touring to four venues under the auspices of the American Federation of Arts, is scheduled to be shown Oct. 2-Dec. 27, 2009, at the Denver Art Museum. (A museum spokeswoman said a formal contract has not yet been signed.)
The show will encompass about 75 floral-themed works by such celebrated artists as Mary Cassatt, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet.
“It was really the Denver Art Museum jumping on the opportunity to have such an extraordinary show with great artists,” said Timothy Standring, Gates Foundation curator of painting and sculpture. “There was a huge waiting list for that exhibition, and we were fortunate to put our hat in very early.”
Despite what will be two impressionism exhibitions in a little more than a year’s time, visitors should not expect the pattern to continue. According to Standring, the proximity of the offerings on the calendar was merely a coincidence.
Kyle MacMillan
“Inspiring Impressionism”
Art. Denver Art Museum, West 13th Avenue between Broadway and Bannock Street. An exhibition of 100 old-master and impressionist paintings, drawings and sculpture, offering new insights into the relationships between the old and new. Saturday through May 25. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. $20, $17 seniors and college students, $12 ages 6 to 18 and free for members and children 5 or younger. Advance purchase recommended. 866-942-2787 or . Information only: 720-865-5000.
