Vive l’impressionnisme! Masterpieces from Dutch Collections

A new exhibition celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of impressionism, specifically musing on the movement’s development within the Netherlands

Vive l’impressionnisme! Masterpieces from Dutch Collections, Van Gogh Museum. Photo: Michael Floor.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
11 October 2024 – 26 January 2025

by ALLIE BISWAS

In the spring of 1874, a group of artists in Paris decided to show their work in rented rooms just north of the Place Vendôme. The cover of the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition staged by this loose collective, whose members included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, noted it was their “premiere exposition” – an endeavour that had been preceded by numerous failed attempts, by all involved, to have their work accepted by the high-profile Salon. The show turned out to be a failure on all fronts, but it did leave a mark of sorts: writing about it in the satirical magazine Le Charivari, the critic Louis Leroy took the title of a painting by Monet, Impression, Sunrise (1872), and derided the group with the name “impressionists”. The name stuck, and, fortunately for the artists it alluded to, its implication evolved. Now generally understood as the birth of the first modern art movement in western art history, its 150th anniversary is being marked by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam with an exhibition of well-known and rarely seen works from Dutch museums and private collections across the Netherlands.

Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, c1888. Oil on canvas, 72 × 83 cm. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

What the exhibition immediately makes clear is that, while the Parisian movement led by Monet was internationally renowned by the 1890s, with the export of impressionist paintings having become a common occurrence by then, the Netherlands took a long time to come around to this style of art. This was partly down to the cultural mindset of the Dutch, but also implies that these paintings, which depicted shifting light and the effects of nature in vivid colours, were genuinely shocking to audiences. Vincent van Gogh, who was born and raised in the south of Holland, heard about the movement through his brother Theo, an art dealer who was working in Paris from 1884 and was instrumental in persuading his employers, Goupil & Cie, to acquire paintings by Monet and Degas and show them to the public.

Claude Monet, Monet’s Studio-Boat (Le bateau-atelier), 1874. Oil on canvas, 50.2 × 65.5 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Photo: Rik Klein Gotink.

Two paintings paired in the exhibition reflect this transitional moment: the way that impressionism turned Van Gogh into the artist he is best-known for being. He was inspired to adapt his painting style in response to the updates he was receiving from his sibling abroad. The early attempts show that he hadn’t quite got the hang of it – he had to rely solely on the descriptions in Theo’s letters. It was only when he saw impressionist works firsthand that his style underwent a true transformation. Avenue of Poplars in Autumn, which he painted in 1884, is typical of the artist’s early style: a dark, melancholic picture with a hooded figure in the foreground. Three years later, he painted Horse Chestnut Tree in Blossom in Paris: a smattering of dense brushstrokes in vivid green and yellow that form a velvety impression of the flowering tree.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Young Girl Reading (Jeune femme lisant), 1889. Pastel on paper, 63 × 52.5 cm. John & Marine van Vlissingen Fine Arts.

Regardless of such developments, though, the exhibition reminds us of the art that persisted in the Netherlands. Paintings from the art collection of Hendrik and Sientje Mesdag are displayed to show us what was considered the most modern painting style in the Netherlands at the end of the 19th century. This is what people still wanted to see: stark realism in all available shades of brown and grey.

Theo van Gogh did, though, help to influence collectors in the Netherlands, even if that circle was small. Road Leading to the Lake (c1880) by Cézanne, a vibrant, green-hued composition of diagonal marks, was first purchased by Andries Bonger (whose sister later married Theo) just five years after the painting was completed: Cézanne was one of the impressionists whom it was most difficult to convince people about, making Bonger’s acquisition all the more meaningful.

Claude Monet, La Corniche near Monaco, 1884. Oil on canvas, 75 × 94 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, gift of M.C., Baroness van Lynden-van Pallandt, The Hague, 1900.

After all of this, it is interesting to find that Monet, arguably the most prominent of the impressionists, was painting in the Netherlands as early as 1871, with his second visit taking place in 1872. A highlight of the exhibition is a rarely seen work featuring windmills with bright blades (Windmills near Zaandam 1871), one of many scenes Monet would have depicted of canals, boats and windmills during the four months he spent in Zaandam, a city just north of Amsterdam. Also on display is his La Corniche near Monaco (1884), which was donated to the Rijksmuseum in 1900, making it the first French impressionist work to enter a Dutch public collection.

This exhibition is not just about the well-known names, though. There are some excellent paintings here by lesser-known artists. Gustave Caillebotte’s View Seen Through a Balcony (1880) is a black-and-lilac masterpiece in which the balcony of the artist’s apartment in Paris is the centre of attention. A series of Japanese-influenced prints made in Paris by the American Mary Cassatt in 1890 and 1891 reveal personal moments in daily life, such as in Woman Bathing, in which a figure stands over a wash basin with the top half of her dress undone down to her waist. There are also some exceptional paintings that are unlikely to be on everyone’s radar; an early Renoir, for example featuring his long-time model (Standing Young Woman (Lise Tréhot) 1866), a tiny painting that effortlessly conveys the soft folds of her gown amid a hazy sunlit garden.

Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing from the print series The Ten, 1890-91. Drypoint, etching and aquatint in colour on paper, 43.5 × 30.1 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam,

In total, 12 Dutch museums and private collections have lent works to the exhibition, which are seen together for the first time here. It is a special opportunity to encounter such rarely seen paintings (as well as a small selection of sculpture and works on paper) by artists who really did lead the way in developing modern art at the end of the 19th century.