Monet To Matisse, as an exhibition name, sets the gold standard for museums everywhere. The public loves Impressionism and Post-Impressionism; their origins in controversy are all but unimaginable; today. So much so that the current exhibition at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute in Utica, New York is the second to use that title this year. (The first was an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida. There is no connection between these two, the first being assembled from museums around the country.) What the exhibition in Utica offers is an experience of an entirely different kind. It could be called 'Corot To Chagall' without sacrificing alliteration to accuracy. On view until Thanksgiving weekend this Monet To Matisse is built around the permanent collection of the Dixon Gallery in Memphis, a collection that has rarely traveled and is only visiting upstate New York while its home is undergoing renovations.
Hugh Dixon and Margaret Oates Dixon assembled their collection with help from John Rewald, a pioneer in the study of French painting. Hugh Dixon was English; Margaret Dixon was American. The couple bought seventeen acres near downtown Memphis where they built a home and began to collect art. Rewald introduced them to French art and Margaret Dixon was particularly attracted to paintings that included the color combination of green and white. Because they had no children, the Dixons set up a foundation to secure their collection for the benefit of their community. Margaret died in February 1974 and Hugo was killed in an automobile accident in November,
![]()
Hugh Dixon and Margaret Oates Dixon assembled their collection with help from John Rewald, a pioneer in the study of French painting. Hugh Dixon was English; Margaret Dixon was American. The couple bought seventeen acres near downtown Memphis where they built a home and began to collect art. Rewald introduced them to French art and Margaret Dixon was particularly attracted to paintings that included the color combination of green and white. Because they had no children, the Dixons set up a foundation to secure their collection for the benefit of their community. Margaret died in February 1974 and Hugo was killed in an automobile accident in November,
John Rewald (1912-1994) studied art with a zeal that anthropologist Clifford Geertz would term “thick description.” Like Charles Chasse with the Nabis, no town was too out of the way and no friend or relation of an artist too obscure for Rewald to interview. Everyone who studies these artists is his heir, whether they know it or not. He inspired such trust in those he met that the journalist Felix Feneon made Rewald the executor of his art collection.
Rewald was born in Germany and emigrated to France where he earned a Doctorate of Letters from the University of Paris for an early study of Cezanne. When WWII began, Rewald was labeled an enemy alien. Alfred Barr, Jr., of the Museum of Modern Art sponsored Rewald’s emigration to the U.S.
Rewald knew there had to be a Cezanne for the Dixon collection and Trees And Rocks Near The Chateau-Noir features a location on the road that ran between Aix and Mont Sainte-Victoire, two of the artist's favorite subjects. Cezanne was less interested in the chateau than in the woods around it; he liked to work in spots where the sky was barely visible through the tree branches.
Like the later works of the Impressionists, The Paver On the Chantilly Road - Fontainbleau (c.1830-35) was a early departure from traditional French landscapes at the time Corot painted it. Figures in French paintings, unlike those in Dutch art, were usually famous people or characters from mythology, not working people. The painting includes horizontal strokes of color often present in paintings from the Dixon collection; the way these at the bottom of the canvas thin out to the consistency of watercolor at the is modern looking touch. Corot predated the other artists in this exhibition but he belongs with them; he made their way possible.
Paul Camille Guigou (1834 – 1871) was a landscape painter from Provence who studied art in Marseilles and settled there. Despite his artistic influences, from the Barbizon school to Gustave Courbet, Guigou's own paintings were received with indifference. He made his living by giving lessons and writing the newspaper reviews. Following his early death from a stroke at thirty-seven, Guigou was forgotten, his pictures in private collections. Interest in Guigou's work began with an exhibition in Paris in the early 20th century; he was one of Rewald's "discoveries." Although it is small in size, Environs de Martigues adroitly draws our eyes into a surprisingly deep vista where sparkling white rocks scattered about the foreground are matched by intensely blue ribbons of water behind, both highlighted by the bright Mediterranean sun. The man and two dogs to the right of the meandering path suggest that purpose, at least momentarily, gives way to a lazy afternoon. There is something expansive about this humble oil on board, as though the southern sun has opened our eyes to a larger world.
In spite of his provincial background, Gaston La Touche (1854-1913) had his first works exhibited at age twenty-one. Felix Bracquemond advised the young artist to study the eighteenth century painters Watteau and Boucher; when he did, La Touche brightened his palette. First shown in 1909 The Joyous Festival was considered old-fashioned but that no longer mattered when Rewald recommended it to the Dixons. At 82x113 inches it is one of the largest paintings in the exhibition and it looks to be the finest La Touche ever painted. His feathery brushstrokes make the paper lanterns and the falling fireworks upstage the formidable backdrop of Versailles. La Touche is another example of Rewald's view from inside the French art world. Rewald interviewed Renoir's younger brother Edmond, along with Paul Signac and Aristide Maillol, and he was a close friend of the families of Odilon Redon and Camille Pissarro.
It was Rewald's idol Paul Cezanne who said, “We are perhaps all derived from Pissarro. Already in '65 he had eliminated black, bitumen, sienna, and ochres. This is a fact. 'Only paint with the three primary colors and their immediate derivatives,' he told me...”
During his last summer Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) stayed at the port city of Le Havre from June until September 1903, producing a series of twenty-four pictures, “perhaps the most remarkable group of works he ever made.” Public acclaim had been long coming to Pissarro who relished the prospect of documenting changes to a beloved French locale.
He chose a front row seat, taking rooms at the Hotel Continental overlooking the jetty. Pleasure craft and commercial boats share the water, vacationers promenade the boardwalk while stevedores work on the docks. Interest is added to The Jetty At Le Havre through that vantage point, a rectangle become a trapezoid the better to offer a broad view of the goings-on.
Albert Marquet (1875-1947) came from Bordeaux to study at the Ecole des Arts-Decoratifs in Paris which is where he worked beside Henri Matisse. When the two of them, along with Raoul Dufy and Andre Derain exhibited their brightly colored paintings together at the 1905 Salon d'Automne, their were dubbed Les Fauves (Wild Beasts). It was not a compliment. Although Marquet and Matisse remained close and discussed their works often, Marquet is a shadowy presence outside France. Here, again, Rewald chose well; this is one of Marquet's most satisfying works, Blue Boat At Porquerolles is a gallant little craft and we envy its crew.
The Palace, Belle-Ile (1897)) by Matisse also features a little boat. This early Matisse, less stylized than his later works, was painted during his second visit to an island off the coast of Brittany where he stayed with the Australian painter John Peter Russell. Russell showed Matisse paintings by the late Vincent van Gogh whose works were little known at the time; they came as a revelation to Matisse. His use of bold horizontal stripes in complementary colors to render the boat demonstrate the power of color used as line. Because of this, I like to think the two-masted schooner is the “palace” of the picture.
Henri-Edmond Cross (1856-1910) has been overlooked on this side of the Atlantic. A friend of Signac, Cross experimented with bright dabs of color, called pointillist. His paintings, more than those of any of his contemporaries, have been favored for the covers of recordings of French music.
Like Renoir, Cross suffered from rheumatism, a particularly cruel ailment for a painter. Cross moved to the south of France in hopes that warmer weather would bring him relief. He continued to paint until his very last months. Each tiny dot of paint applied to The Little Maure Mountains (1909) cost him dearly. A small work (13x21 inches) that conveys the grand sweep of the mountains above Sainte-Tropez, in the current exhibition, the picture is placed next to Les Collettes (14x18 inches, c.1914) a landscape with figures by Renoir.
An earlier work by Renoir, The Wave (1882) was painted on or perhaps in, the English Channel off the Normandy coast. As close to abstraction as Renoir ever came, he makes the viewer discover the little boat making for shore on the rough Channel seas. Renoir's brushstrokes, often delicate and feathery in his portraits, here are thick and pasty, they give body to motion.
A French perspective on French art, this exhibition should not be missed.
Revised August 5, 2015.
For further reading;
John Rewald - Studies in Impressionism, H.N. Abrams, New York: 1985.
John Rewald - Studies In Post-Impressionism, H.N. Abrams, New Uork: 1986.
Monet to Matisse: The Age of French Impressionism is on view at Munson-Willaims-Proctor Art Institute, Utica, NY from May 16 through November 29.
Images: all artworks are from the collection of the Dixon Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee.
1. Marc Chagall - Bouquet of Flowers With Lovers, 1927.
2. Paul Cezanne - Trees And Rocks near Chateau-Noir, c.1900-06
2. Paul Cezanne - Trees And Rocks near Chateau-Noir, c.1900-06
3. Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot - The Paver Of The Chantilly Road - Fontainbleau, c. 1830-35.
4 Paul Guigou - Environs of Martigues, 1869.
5. Gaaston La Touche - The Joyous Festival, 1909.
6. Camille Pissarro - Entree du port du Havreet les brises-lames ouest soleil matin, 1903.
7. Albert Marquet - Blue Boat At Porquerolles, 1937.
8. Henri Matiise - The Palace. Belle-Ile, 1897.
9. Henri-Edmond Cross - The Little Maure Mountains, 1909.
10. Pierre-Auguste Renoir - The Wave at Sea,
8. Henri Matiise - The Palace. Belle-Ile, 1897.
9. Henri-Edmond Cross - The Little Maure Mountains, 1909.
10. Pierre-Auguste Renoir - The Wave at Sea,