Barnes hopes to transport you to France with Monet, Cézanne, Modigliani, and more

Art lovers will soon be able to take an inspired tour through the varied beauty of France, and they won’t even have to leave Philadelphia to do it.

The Barnes Foundation has announced a new exhibit, “From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes,” which will be held June 29-Aug. 31 in the Barnes’ first floor Roberts Gallery.

Many of the more than 50 paintings in this exhibit will likely be familiar to previous Barnes visitors, but the intent is that by placing these artworks in new contexts, the exhibition will open visitors to new perspectives.

The exhibition will be a rare opportunity “to see beloved works in the Barnes collection in a completely new installation, as well as to discover small gems that tend to get lost in the densely packed display in the collection galleries,” said Cindy Kang, curator at the Barnes and of this exhibit. “It’s a show that emphasizes the pleasure of looking and considers how travel enriches and impacts our lives.”

“From Paris to Provence” gives a view into how the country shaped and inspired the art of modern painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That includes particular locations that touched these artists.

“For example, one wall examines the suburbs of Paris as a dynamic setting for the Impressionists and Postimpressionists because these areas outside the city were both semi-industrialized as well as sites of leisure,” Kang said. “This energizing contrast between work and pleasure can be seen across the wall, which includes Monet’s Studio Boat (1876) along with van Gogh’s painting of a glass factory (The Factory, 1887).”

Another part of the exhibition focuses on the paintings Cézanne made at the Jas de Bouffan, his family estate in Provence.

The exhibit also gives a look into these great painters and how different parts of France and, in some cases, its people moved the artists to create art.

Paris, of course, as the center of the art world during this time, was important to quite a few of the artists in this exhibit. It drew them from many places and many schools of artistic practice.

“We see Paris through the eyes of Manet, Degas, Renoir, etc., and then travel to the South of France with van Gogh,” Kang said. “As a Dutchman, van Gogh was seeing Arles from the perspectives of a foreigner and seeking a very specific experience there — a rustic environment away from the city, a place with deep history, the brilliant sunlight.”

Artists Amedeo Modigliani and Chaïm Soutine, Kang added, moved to Paris in the early 20th century and fled to the south during World War I.

“Their story of permanently moving to France contrasts with artists like De Chirico and Miró who came after them and used Paris as one base for their artistic practice,” Kang said.

She contrasted that with Cézanne, “a proud Provencal whose paintings of his native soil and family home form the heart of the exhibition.” Of the works in the exhibition, 21 are paintings by Cézanne belonging to the Barnes collection.

While “From Paris to Provence” is in the Roberts Gallery, the first floor of the collection will be otherwise closed for floor maintenance. But this is temporary.

“The works will return to their original locations on the first floor of the collection galleries,” said Kang, “so this exhibition is an extraordinary occasion not to be missed!”