EXHIBITION: PICTURES OF EXILE
Do politics and war leave their imprints on artistic creations? Or do painters just go ahead with their work, indifferent to these phenomena? We have already discussed this enigma in our description of Picasso’s famous work ‘Guernica’. But this time the Petit Palais in Paris is going through the unusual and little-known legend of a group of French impressionists who had crossed the English Channel in order to escape a massive military conflict in their own country. As a consequence, they ended up creating a series of incredibly inventive works in London.
Claude Monet, Camille Pissaro, James Tissot, Gieuseppe de Nittis, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Alfred Sisley, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean Legros, Jules Dalou and André Derain had left France following the Prussian invasion in 1870 and had stayed and worked in London despite the fact that many British museums had refused either to buy their paintings or arrange their exhibitions.
Recently, the Tate Gallery in London took the initiative to show these works under a new light, stressing the conditions under which they were created. Now for the first time in France, the Petit Palais is showing 140 of these paintings as well.
An exhibition in Petit Palais in Paris highlights the hitherto little known history of a group of impressionists’ exile in London
Isabelle Collet, the museum’s curator in-charge of the show, says organising the event was important in the sense that, though these works have since become well-known, not many art enthusiasts are aware of the historical details and ignore that the Prussian forces had defeated France in only a few months’ time.
Monet made up his mind when he was ordered to join the army and move to the front. As he only wanted to paint and do nothing else, he decided to take a boat and crossed the Channel instead with his family. He was met at the port by Daubigny who was among the first impressionist refugees in London. They were soon joined by Pissaro and others.