Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia

“We have come to recognize that the sources of modern art and the various influences that shaped its development are remarkably diverse,” notes Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “In this regard, it is increasingly important to understand how artists of this period looked to the past — drawing upon powerful and still vital artistic traditions — and how they shaped it to their own individual visions. As Philadelphia will be the only venue for this wonderful exhibition, we hope that it will persuade many visitors from this country and abroad to visit our city this summer.”

The renewed interest in the theme of Arcadia in the early decades of the 20th century was motivated in part by the desire that all artists feel to measure themselves against the great accomplishments of the past — Cézanne once said famously that he wished to “redo Poussin after nature” — as well as by the fascination with a subject that has a universal appeal. Moving beyond the classical treatment of Arcadia that had long dominated European painting, the avant-garde interpreted it in new and very different ways.

Cézanne’s many variations on this theme, especially The Large Bathers, were perhaps the most enigmatic, as well as the most influential. Some painters, like Gauguin, Matisse, and Henri Rousseau, transplanted the Arcadian theme to tropical settings, real or imagined, replete with lush foliage and the powerful allure that such distant places had for the European imagination. Others, such as Paul Signac, Robert Delaunay, or German artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Franz Marc, each updated this theme and brought it, in their own distinctive ways, into communion with contemporary culture: Signac in the service of his progressive politics, which imagined a new golden age of peace and prosperity for the common man; Delaunay, who married the pastoral ideal with his favored theme of the modern city, creating a great decorative mural entitled The City of Paris (1910 - 12); and the Germans — responding, by contrast, to the increasingly fragmented and hectic pace of the modern world — in pursuit of the vision of a return to a simpler life, one that would be made more balanced and complete by being brought into harmony with nature.

Henri Matisse French, 1869–1954, Bathers by a River, March 1909-10, May-November 1913, and early spring 1916-October (?) 1917. Oil on canvas 102 1/2 x 154 3/16 in. The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, 1953.158

Many of the paintings brought together for this exhibition also serve as a reminder of how many of the most progressive artists of this period — the decades just before and after the turn of the 20th century — not only adapted the image of Arcadia for new uses, but often did so on a monumental scale. For example, the new figural paintings that Picasso, Derain, and others painted in 1907 and later not only signaled new directions in their art, they were also among the largest works they had created up to that time. And, to return to the heart of the exhibition, the three great canvases painted by Gauguin, Cézanne, and Matisse — Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, The Large Bathers, and Bathers by a River — were intended not simply as summary statements of the distinctive visions of each of these three master artists, but also as proofs of the power of modern painting to speak eloquently on the scale of the epic paintings of the past.

“Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia reflects the challenge of expressing a timeless and deeply human ideal with new urgency and meaning in the modern era,” said Joseph J. Rishel, The Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Painting before 1900, and Senior Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection and the Rodin Museum. “By bringing together these ambitious works, we hope to convey an unusual range of achievement leading up to World War I, as artists fueled by high optimism and sometimes profound unease looked inward and to each other to give creative shape to the common fate of the human condition.”

About the catalogue: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, has published a catalogue with 180 color plates. It contains essays by Joseph J. Rishel, including Arcadia 1900 and Cézanne, Virgil, Poussin; Charles Dempsey, The Painter’s Arcadia; George Shackelford, Trouble in Paradise; Stephanie D’Alessandro, Re-visioning Arcadia: Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River; and Tanja Pirsig-Marshall, “Dream the Myth Onwards”: Visions of Arcadia in German Expressionist Art. It will be available in the Museum store in hardcover ($55) beginning June 18, 2012. ISBN: 9780300179804. It also can be purchased by calling 1-800-329-4856, or online at philamuseum.org.

The exhibition will be on view during a time when numerous major art-related projects are coming to completion around Philadelphia, including the opening of the Barnes Foundation, the reopening of the Rodin Museum, both on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and Sol LeWitt: Lines in Four Directions in Flowers, a new garden situated between the banks of the Schuylkill River and the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Sculpture Garden and the Riley Memorial.

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Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia

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