Impressions of the land

PROVO — In keeping with its remarkable record of superb and cogent exhibits, the Brigham Young University Museum of Art has once again offered Utah a show worthy of special attention — "Paths to Impressionism: French and American Landscape Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum."

The traveling exhibition traces the changing traditions of the Barbizon and Impressionist movements as their popularity rose in France and influenced the art of America. The exhibit is on display through July 8.

"We're the only museum in the western United States that got a chance to show this," said Paul Anderson, Museum of Art curator and the exhibit's designer. "The paintings in this exhibition are easy to love."

Composed of 42 opulent paintings from the Worcester Art Museum — 30 miles west of Boston, Mass. — the show features landscapes by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, George Inness, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Alfred Sisley and many others.

"Because landscape paintings like these have been so universally appreciated for more than a century," said Anderson, "it is easy to forget how revolutionary and controversial they were in their time."

In the 1840s and '50s, a group of young artists who had gathered around the little village of Barbizon, France, turned away from the carefully rendered aristocratic portraits and history paintings that dominated the art world. These artists sought to depict their surroundings with greater realism by painting outdoors and choosing subjects that included the lives of ordinary working people.

By the 1860s their work began to attract international attention and followers. In the 1870s a second generation of French innovators called Impressionists pushed the envelope further, employing brilliant unblended colors, loose brush strokes, and contemporary urban and industrial subjects.

Although critics and academics initially ridiculed the Impressionists' work, the changes the artists instituted altered the world of painting.

Many of the revolutionary painting ideas from France found enthusiastic acceptance in the United States. Aspiring American artists left home to study in France, bringing back with them the techniques of the French masters.

"It's a wonderful story about all these Americans, mostly young people, undertaking the adventure of going off to Europe to study and to come back with all these new ideas and new ways of looking at their own country," said Anderson. "That's kind of an exciting aspect of the show."