Oklahoma City KEY - Cover Story

Visitors to Oklahoma City have the unique opportunity to view Millet to Matisse: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French Painting from Kelvingrove Art Gallery through December 5, at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

Drawn from Glasgow’s distinguished Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the exhibition includes paintings rarely seen outside Scotland. Millet to Matisse includes works from the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modern periods by such masters as Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, Cézanne, van Gogh, and Picasso.

The collection of French paintings gives a fascinating and valuable overview of the major styles and the prevailing art in France from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. For Millet to Matisse, Guest Curator Vivien Hamilton has selected sixty-four of the Gallery’s most acclaimed paintings by artists who worked in France during the extraordinary period of creativity between 1830 and 1930.

Organized thematically, the exhibition begins during the mid-nineteenth century with a selection of works by the painters associated with various realist styles, including the landscape painters of the Barbizon School. Paintings included in this section range from the powerfully rendered Going to Work (1850-51) by Millet to idealized views of the rural poor by Jules Breton. These painters' exploration of the native landscapes of France is often seen as the precursor to the Impressionists' investigation of the suburbs of Paris. In addition to works by Pissarro and Sisley, Monet's View of Ventimiglia (1884) is on view as well as paintings by Renoir and Seurat, which bring Impressionism into the twentieth century. Turn-of-the-century Paris then witnessed avant-garde artists and styles that influenced twentieth-century painting. Paintings by Braque and Picasso round out the selection of twentieth-century works.

A 215-page lavishly illustrated catalog provides a short essay on each work along with full catalog details, and audio tours of the exhibition are available. Admission to the exhibition is $7 for adults, $5 for students and seniors, children five and under and Museum members are free. Group tours are $4 per person for fifteen or more. For additional information call (405) 236-3100.

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