CMA ON TOUR
CMA Painting Inspires Traveling Exhibition
The Seine at Giverny (L’Ile aux Orties, Giverny), 1897, Claude Monet, French, 1840-1926, Oil on canvas, Gift of Mary T. Chambers in1964
Museums often lend treasured objects to
exhibitions to bring a new understanding
to art. Such works are missed locally, but
serve as cultural ambassadors for their
institutions and communities.
One of the CMA’s most popular paintings,
Monet’s The Seine at Giverny (L’Ile aux
Orties, Giverny), served as the genesis of
the idea for a traveling 2014 exhibition,
Mornings on the Seine: Impressions of a
River. The exhibition reunites the 28
paintings of Monet’s series for the first
time in over a century, allowing visitors
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and scholars to view his exploration of the
subject in its entirety.
Monet devoted much of his time in 1896
and 1897 to capturing the distinctive light
and atmospheric changes along the river
Seine near his home in Giverny. When
the resulting series was exhibited in June
1898 at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris,
these pictures helped establish Monet’s
reputation as a landscape painter.
Our painting will be a key work in this
exhibition, which examines the larger
context of Monet’s exploration of the
Seine. The exhibition also considers the
broader personal, political and artistic
context for the series, particularly the
artist’s growing environmental concerns
about the industrial encroachment on the
French countryside.
The exhibition is on view at the Philbrook
Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
beginning June 29, 2014, and at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas,
beginning October 26, 2014. n