A little known artist is about to get some of the spotlight in a new art exhibit in Alabama. The Birmingham Museum of Art is unveiling a collection of French modern art. The exhibit will contain work from well-known names like Claude Monet and Mary Cassat. The show also features paintings by the lesser-known artist Marie Bracquemond. Birmingham Curator Maggie Croftland says a certain landscape is one of her favorites among this artist’s paintings.
“When we acquired it, it really came out of her family, from her descendants and it was never framed, and it's this beautiful, tiny little landscape, and we have decided not to frame it, and you won't see it on a wall. You'll see it in a case,” Croftland said.
The Birmingham Museum of Art is hosting the show “French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850-1950’ after the exhibit was featured from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. The North American Reciprocal Museum Association describes the show as one that.
“…showcases more than 50 works from the distinguished Brooklyn Museum collection, encompassing the key avant-garde movements that emerged in and around Paris during this period. Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism are represented in remarkable examples by the era’s leading artists, including Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Camille Corot, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and more.”
The exhibit features works of art created during a time of great change in the world and the artists that captured those images on canvas. Innovations considered as simple as oil paint in tubes made an impact on great artists. Curator Maggie Croftland says the art from this period gives us insight into how these people viewed the world around them.
“There's World War One and World War Two happens. In the meantime, the camera is invented in this period. Yeah, and these artists are trying to grapple with political turmoil and war and peace and all these developments,” she noted.
This exhibition will help kick off the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Birmingham Museum of Art.
