Impressive Impressionist Exhibition!

Main Entrance to MFAH

You must make every effort to see as many of the Impressionists' masterpieces as you can (before the inevitable happens, that is). Put that on your bucket list.

If you live on a continent where any of the art museums house them, then it is a must-do, must-go, must-see trip.

Last year when the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) announced it would be hosting an exhibition of the Impressionists work, I knew it would be big. And it is. And I knew that I would go. And I did.

Yesterday, I and a few family members spent an afternoon gazing at and soaking in the beauty of the paintings at the exhibition titled ‘Impressionist & Post-Impressionist - Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art.’

And was it worth it! The exhibition filled up six galleries (big, skylight-lit rooms) on the second floor of the Beck Building. If you are any kind of art lover, then it is not a stretch to say it was awe-inspiring, and if you are a painter, then it was beyond inspiring. The paintings were arranged more or less chronologically with the Impressionists in the first galleries, and the Post-Impressionists in the latter galleries.

These masterpieces are on exhibition in Houston for three months that began February 20 while their permanent home in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is being refurbished.

I am twice lucky since I already have seen these magnificent paintings during previous visits to D.C. and the National Gallery.

The curators did a nice job placing replicas of the artists' signatures in very large, and what looked like  special vinyl-adhesive, templates on the walls above the artists' respective paintings.

And what were some of the paintings? Only some of the most well-known and well-loved paintings of the late 19th-century. To name a few, they include:

-Claude Monet’s The Japanese Footbridge and Woman With A Parasol

-Edouard Manet’s Plum Brandy and The Railway

-Auguste Renoir’s The Dancer

-Vincent Van Gogh’s Self Portrait 1889

…And many more by these artists in addition to famous paintings by Frederic Bazille, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Eva Gonzales, Paul Cezanne, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

All I can say is, what an exhibition(!), and I hope wherever you are in the world, you also have the opportunity to view these and other great paintings of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

Happy Painting!