Turner to Monet: Masterpieces from The Walters Art Museum

About the Exhibit

October 2, 2010 – January 2, 2011

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin presents Turner to Monet: Masterpieces from The Walters Art Museum from October 2, 2010 – January 2, 2011. This selection of forty nineteenth-century paintings includes works from Impressionist artists Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, as well as British and American masters J.M.W. Turner, Gilbert Stuart and Asher B. Durand, among others. Ned Rifkin, director of The Blanton states, “This special exhibition will offer our visitors a rare opportunity to experience one of the country’s finest collections of nineteenth-century painting. We are thrilled to be able to bring works of this caliber to Austin and could not have done so without remarkable support from the community, from Joe and Teresa Long, and from the exhibition’s Presenting Corporate Sponsor, Chase.”

Selected by former Walters curator Eik Kahng for their art historical significance and fine quality, these paintings provide examples of the various artistic schools and movements of nineteenth-century painting in Western Europe and the United States.  Highlights include J.A.D. Ingres’ neoclassical rendering of Oedipus and the Sphinx(1864) and Eugène Delacroix’sChrist on the Sea of Galilee (1854), as well as Monet’s Springtime(1872) and Manet’s fascinatingCafé-Concert (1879). The dialogue between the academic and avant-garde is further explored in Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier’s 1814 (1862), a jewel-like portrait of Napoleon on horseback, and Mariano Fortuny’s astonishing satirical portrait of a clergyman – likely an inspiration for Francis Bacon’s pope paintings. While each work is deeply satisfying on its own, together they make an exhibition that captures well the historical breadth and depth of The Walters collection and of nineteenth-century painting.

Repartee:  19^th-Century Prints and Drawings from The Blanton Collection

August 14, 2010 – January 16, 2011

To provide further context, The Blanton has organized an exhibition of over 100 works on paper from its collection that examines a greater number of artists and ideas introduced in the presentation of paintings in Turner to Monet.  The social and cultural frameworks of nineteenth-century art are revealed in this dialogue between the collections in Baltimore and Austin.  Works by John Constable, William Blake, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, J.A.M Whistler, Paul Gauguin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, to name only a few, show the richness and depth of this period.

Find out more about our Turner to Monet Community Collaborations

For a complete list of Turner to Monet programs visit our calendar.

Turner to Monet: Masterpieces from The Walters Art Museum is organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Chase is the Presenting Corporate Sponsor for the presentation of this exhibition at The Blanton.

Major support is provided through a generous challenge grant from Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long.

Support also is provided by Applied Materials, AT&T, Mr. and Mrs. Jack S. Blanton, Sr., Leslie and Jack Blanton, Jr., the Booth Heritage Foundation, Bruce Buckley and Mrs. Vincent Buckley, Sarah and Ernest Butler, Mary Ann and Larry Faulkner, the Elva J. Johnston Foundation, Audre and Bernard Rapoport, Samsung Austin Semiconductor LLC, the William A. and Madeline W. Smith Foundation, Eliza and Stuart Stedman, Carolyn and John H. Young, and the many other donors who contributed to meet the Long Challenge.

Travel for the exhibition is provided by Continental Airlines.

Official Airline of The Blanton