(Image: PA)
Works by France’s most celebrated artists, including Claude Monet, have gone on display in County Durham - many in the UK for the first time.
Impressions of Light: Masterpieces from MuMa Le Havre and The Bowes Museum will run at The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, charting landscape painting’s journey from pre-Impressionism to post-Impressionism through more than 60 works.
The exhibition is a major international partnership with France’s Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux (MuMa) in Le Havre, featuring works by Monet, Eugène Boudin, Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Jean-Francis Auburtin and Raoul Dufy.
Michael Debris, Curator at MuMa Le Havre, and Conservator Jon Old unpack paintings for the ‘Impressions of Light: Masterpieces from MuMa Le Havre and The Bowes Museum’ exhibition at The Bowes Museum in County Durham, created in partnership with the Musée d’art moderne André Malraux (MuMa) (Image: PA)
Hannah Fox, executive director at The Bowes Museum, said: "Impressions of Light: Masterpieces from MuMa Le Havre and The Bowes Museum brings together over 60 works from the collections of Barnard Castle’s Bowes Museum and Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux (MuMa), in Le Havre, Normandy, many of which have never been seen before in the UK.
"In doing so, it doesn’t simply create a dialogue between our two museums; it restores a connection between two worlds."
The exhibition also explores founders John and Joséphine Bowes’s links to France and the French art world, including regular visits to Le Havre.
Claude Monet, Fécamp, bord de mer, 1881 MuMa Le Havre Florian Kleinefenn (Image: MuMa Le Havre Florian Kleinefenn)
Impressions of Light is divided into themed sections linking the landscapes of northern France with County Durham’s countryside.
The first section shows how Le Havre’s busy international port inspired artistic innovation in the 19th century, through works by Eugène Boudin, Raoul Dufy, Gaston Prunier and Maxime Maufra.
The second section turns to fields, farming and rural life, with works by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Georges Michel, Gustave Courbet and Boudin.
Alfred Sisley, Le Loing à Saint-Mammès, circa 1884-1886 MuMa Le Havre Florian (Image: MuMa Le Havre Florian)
It ends with Boudin’s cattle studies, showing how light and weather transform the landscape.
The exhibition then follows artists revisiting the same landscapes in changing seasons and light.
Armand Guillaumin’s views of Crozant, painted in different seasons, show the landscape changing colour and form.
Works by Camille Pissarro, Henri-Edmond Cross and Jean-Francis Auburtin develop the idea, blending landscape with memory, sensation and atmosphere.
Another section explores the Normandy coast, where artists captured fleeting changes in sea and sky.
Claude Monet’s Fécamp, Seaside (1881) is a highlight, linking cliffs, sea and sky through colour and movement in one luminous moment.
Vicky Sturrs, director of programmes and collections at The Bowes Museum, said: "For much of the 19th century, the landscapes of northern France became a testing ground for modern painting.
"As artists moved between forests and fertile valleys, windswept cliffs and expanding ports, they developed new approaches to capturing light, atmosphere, and life itself.
"Landscapes were not simply subjects to be painted, but places from which a transformational, new visual language emerged."
The final section shows how industrialisation and urbanisation changed the 19th-century landscape.
Works by Alexandre René Véron, Charles-François Daubigny and Alfred Sisley capture changing environments, from Paris’s outskirts to quiet riverside settlements.
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Géraldine Lefebvre, curator and director of MuMa, said: "Museum collections often tell much more than the history of the works themselves.
"They carry within them the journeys of those who built them.
"The exhibition Impressions of Light: Masterpieces from MuMa Le Havre and The Bowes Museum is part of this history.
"It re-establishes an old link between two territories, Normandy and North East England, united in the 19th century by the singular destiny of Joséphine and John Bowes."
The Bowes Museum and MuMa – Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre, present the exhibition with co-organiser Manifesto Expo.