Jennifer A. Thompson, Joseph J. Rishel, Eileen Owens, Timothy Rub, eds. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. 216 pp. $35.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-87633-289-4.

Reviewed by Nancy Locke (Pennsylvania State University)

Published on H-Pennsylvania (January, 2021)

Commissioned by Jeanine Mazak-Kahne (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)

The collection of Impressionist and Post-Im‐ hundred paintings, drawings, and watercolors by pressionist art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Paul Cézanne; twenty-two paintings by [Claude] stands as one of the richest in the nation. It is not Monet; fifty paintings, sculptures, and drawings by surprising that the institution would want to docu‐ Pierre-Auguste Renoir; 150 sculptures by Auguste ment it in book form. The questions that arise, Rodin; more than eighty works by Mary Cassatt; however, concern the form that such a book and seminal pieces by Edgar Degas, Édouard should take. Curators necessarily considered how Manet, Camille Pissarro, and Henri de Toulouse- much of the vast collection should be included, Lautrec”—not to mention noteworthy works by and how many works should be illustrated. If these Vincent van Gogh, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley, movements are primarily French, how many non- and more—Thompson and her colleagues faced a French artists should appear? What should the bal‐ mammoth task (p. 9). In the end, the book focuses ance be between painting and other art forms? on ninety works in all media. Each has a full-page And is the audience for the book primarily mem‐ color reproduction, identifying information, and a bers of the museum-going public, scholars special‐ catalogue entry or short essay. Instead of having izing in the artists featured, or perhaps readers dis‐ sections devoted to individual artists, which might covering the art for the first time? There may be no have made for weighty sections of Cézanne and correct answers to these questions, and I would Cassatt, for instance, the book orders the objects like to stress that as I sketch the way I think Jen‐ chronologically. At first this might seem odd: Céz‐ nifer A. Thompson and her collaborators chose to anne’s Quartier Four, Auvers-sur-Oise has been structure Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: split from the artist’s famed Mont Ste-Victoire (the Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 1873 painting appears on pp. 48–49, and the later Thompson’s introduction gives some idea of ones—the Philadelphia Museum of Art holds two the decisions that had to be made. “With over two Mont Ste-Victoire landscapes—on pp. 188–191). The H-Net Reviews advantage in the chronological organization can gallerist who championed Impressionist painting be seen, however, when one turns a page or two from a period of controversy and novelty to one and starts to see relationships among works that of commercial success. In all these cases, the res‐ grew out of a particular moment. Monet’s Railroad ulting exhibition catalogues were serious scholarly Bridge, Argenteuil, 1873 (pp. 44-45), in which we see tools. a concern with sunlight and the momentary sight‐ Traditional exhibition catalogues have gener‐ ing of a sailboat and a train, leads to Sisley’s Land‐ ally included such information as a work’s proven‐ scape (Spring at Bougival), also of 1873, with its ance (ownership history), exhibition history, and ephemeral spring blossoms (pp. 46–47), and more bibliography. In recent decades, catalogues have landscapes by Cézanne and Monet that follow. De‐ come to embrace a new model and have included gas’s expressive drawing and color saturation in more substantial essays, more comparative works After the Bath (Woman Drying Herself), c. 1896, (especially those not in the exhibition), and less can be seen as coming to fruition at the same time documentary information for the objects in‐ as richly colored figurative works like Renoir’s Girl cluded. A book like Impressionism and Post-Impres‐ in a Red Ruff and Cassatt’s Mother and Child (Ma‐ sionism: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum ternal Kiss), a pastel on paper (pp. 168–173). Separ‐ of Art could have styled itself as a handbook of the ate sections on the various artists would have ab‐ museum’s collection or a reference book for schol‐ solutely minimized such connections. ars. The authors chose not to include such inform‐ Over the years, the Philadelphia Museum of ation as provenance and exhibition history. In‐ Art has developed and served as a venue for major creasingly, larger museums are putting that kind of exhibitions that have contributed considerable documentation online, where it is easily accessible new knowledge to the field. The late Joseph J. by scholars and where it can be continually up‐ Rishel, formerly Curator Emeritus of European dated as new discoveries are made. One can hope Painting at the museum and a contributor to the that the Philadelphia Museum of Art will indeed book, was the force behind the landmark Cézanne make this information available online in the near (1996) that celebrated the centenary of Ambroise future. Vollard’s exhibition of Cézanne in Paris, and (with Jennifer Thompson’s introductory essay Katherine Sachs) the more experimental Cézanne paints a clear picture of the key patrons whose in‐ and Beyond (2009) that examined Cézanne’s influ‐ terests shaped the museum’s Impressionist collec‐ ence on artists as different as Piet Mondrian and tion. No figure was more important in this history Jasper Johns. Guest curators Juliet Wilson-Bareau than the American painter Mary Cassatt (1844– and David Degener built Manet and the Sea (2003) 1926). She “encouraged the young Louisine Elder around Manet’s The Battle of the USS “Kearsarge” (later Mrs. Henry Osborne Havemeyer) to pur‐ and the CSS “Alabama” of 1864, a history painting chase a Degas pastel in 1877,” Thompson informs in the Philadelphia collection in which a US Navy us, and by 1880, Cassatt’s brother Alexander, the corvette sank the Confederate ship Alabama off first vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the coast of Cherbourg. There have been exhibi‐ was buying Degas, Monet, and Pissarro (p. 12). Not tions that brought new attention to the centrality only would Alexander and his wife acquire nearly of landscape as a genre in Impressionist and Post- thirty Impressionist paintings, but other railroad Impressionist painting, such as Renoir Landscapes executives like Frank Thomson would go on to (2007) and Van Gogh: Up Close (2012). Rishel and travel to France and seek Mary Cassatt’s help in Thompson were also the curators of Discovering purchasing Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sis‐ the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New ley. Anna Riddle Scott, a cousin of the Cassatts and Painting (2015), which highlighted the role of the

2 H-Net Reviews the widow of the former president of the ing a painting of a modern “Madonna,” his 1889 Pennsylvania Railroad, also took advice from Cas‐ painting La Berceuse (p. 131). In these examples satt and bought Manet’s Emilie Ambre as Carmen and many more, the catalogue entries provide the (c. 1879). Alexander Cassatt’s lawyer, John G. John‐ kind of contextual illustration that anyone from a son, would eventually acquire more than ten Im‐ general reader to a professor teaching a survey pressionist paintings in addition to Manet’s course would fnd helpful. “Kearsarge” and “Alabama”; Johnson’s extensive It is clear, however, that the entries are not collection, including Eugène Delacroix, Camille aimed at specialists, even if some essays broach Corot, Jean-François Millet, and Gustave Courbet, the subject of changing interpretations or contro‐ would become the “most important group of versies. Although I applaud the inclusion of the An‐ works ever entrusted to the museum.”[1] Cassatt drieu photograph alongside Monet’s Railroad connections continued to bear fruit for the Phil‐ Bridge, Argenteuil, I have to wonder why the read‐ adelphia Museum of Art for decades to come. er is not directed to Paul Hayes Tucker’s canonical Thompson relates that museum chair Joseph Monet at Argenteuil, which not only discusses the Widener “oversaw the purchase of nine works history of the rebuilt bridge but also the place of from the estate of Lois Cassatt—three Monets, two the Philadelphia canvas in a long series of works in Pissarros, a Renoir, a Cassatt, a Degas, and a which Monet represented the bridges in Argenteuil. Manet,” a purchase that “single-handedly gave [2] Likewise, with the Philadelphia Museum of Art Philadelphia a respectable Impressionist collec‐ possessing not one, but three of Cézanne’s por‐ tion” in 1920 (p. 15). Twenty-five Cassatt prints traits of his wife, Hortense Fiquet Cézanne, I have were given to the museum by the artist’s niece and to question the rather abbreviated entry meant to nephew in 1927, notes Thompson, and “the dona‐ cover all three. Susan Sidlauskas’s lucid study of tion marked the beginning of the museum’s Im‐ the portraits could so easily have been quoted, at pressionist print and drawing collection” (p. 16). least to illuminate the striking animation of the Entries for individual works spotlighted in the brushwork in the portraits (especially catalogue catalogue generally include one additional illus‐ numbers 37 and 38, pp. 100–102).[3] Noting, as tration. Thompson and her colleagues often use Thompson does, that the portraits are among “Céz‐ these illustrations to contextualize the work in the anne’s most psychological and affecting works” collection. Cassatt’s A Woman and a Girl Driving of does not inform readers about many twentieth- 1881, for instance, is accompanied by a period il‐ century critics’ claims as to the portraits’ supposed lustration of a woman driving a carriage (p. 78). A object-like and impersonal qualities that Sid‐ carte-de-visite photograph of Émilie Ambre as Car‐ lauskas and others have efectively refuted. men appears alongside Manet’s painting of the Other publications by these scholars are in‐ same (p. 68). When Monet painted his Railroad deed cited in the bibliography, which is titled as a Bridge, Argenteuil in 1873, the bridge was newly list for “further reading.” Of course, it would not rebuilt after its intentional destruction during the make sense for a catalogue aimed at the general Franco-Prussian War to try to halt the advance‐ reader to wade into the thick of every scholarly de‐ ment of the Prussian forces; the catalogue repro‐ bate, or to provide a dissertation-like literature re‐ duces Jules Andrieu’s photograph of the collapsed view. Yet it is precisely the concision of the cata‐ bridge in 1870–71 (p. 44). We see a page from one of logue entries and the appropriateness of so many Van Gogh’s letters in which he describes, and of the companion illustrations that make me sketches, a project of creating a modern triptych yearn for more in some places. That is not to say or polyptych with seven or nine canvases of Sun‐ that a one-page essay aimed at a visitor to the mu‐ fowers (like the Philadelphia painting) surround‐

3 H-Net Reviews seum, not necessarily a scholar, cannot still com‐ [2]. Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet at Argenteuil municate something singular. Rishel’s entry for (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 57– Cézanne’s Quartier Four, Auvers-sur-Oise pairs the 87. painting with a work by Pissarro from the period [3]. Susan Sidlauskas, Cézanne’s Other: The when the two artists worked closely together: The Portraits of Hortense (Berkeley: University of Cali‐ Climb, Rue de la Côte-du-Jalet, Pontoise (1875) fornia Press, 2009), 79. from the Brooklyn Museum. In two paragraphs, Rishel takes the reader through the observations and formal decisions that drew the artists together as well as differentiated them (p. 48). Likewise, Thompson’s entry for Paul Gauguin’s The Sacred Mountain (Parahi Te Marae) of 1892 broaches the issue of cultural appropriation with crystal-clear text, a reproduction of an ear ornament from the Marquesas Islands, and a reference to research by Gloria Groom and her colleagues at the Art Insti‐ tute of Chicago, proving that political debates can indeed be deftly handled in four hundred words or fewer (p. 158). In the end, the book’s aim to create a substan‐ tial introduction to a broad selection of works as different as a Pissarro etching, a Toulouse-Lautrec watercolor, and a Rodin bronze was more than fulfilled. Even Philadelphians who frequent the museum probably do not know how the Impres‐ sionist collection took shape, and even many Céz‐ anne scholars probably do not know how the mu‐ seum came to be such a center for Cézanne study; both questions are answered by Jennifer Thompson’s introduction. For anyone—general reader or scholar—who has been moved by a work in the galleries, Impressionism and Post-Impres‐ sionism: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art stands as both a beautifully illustrated im‐ print of the collection and an informative intro‐ duction to the riches it contains.

Notes [1]. Françoise Cachin et al., Manet, 1832–1883 (Paris and New York: Réunion des musées na‐ tionaux and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983), 221.

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Citation: Nancy Locke. Review of Thompson, Jennifer A.; Rishel, Joseph J.; Owens, Eileen; Rub, Timothy, eds. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. H- Pennsylvania, H-Net Reviews. January, 2021.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55313

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