Editor’s note: The exhibit runs through November 2. The Kimbell will be open until 8 on Tuesdays through the end of the exhibition. Half-price exhibition admission is offered on Tuesdays (all day) and on Fridays from 5–8 p.m. 

Ah, yes, the Impressionists!  Where would museums be without them?!  In many ways my visit to the Kimball’s current exhibit “The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago” felt as if I was coming full circle after decades of visiting art museums in North America and Europe.  The Chicago collection definitely makes good on its claims to being a major repository of Impressionist art, and the 92 pieces available for viewing at the Kimbell include a few of the best known works in the genre. They are all here: Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin, etc.

It seems that every major art house in North America must produce at least one exhibition of the Impressionists and their immediate successors (preferably with the name “Van Gogh” in the exhibition’s title), if the ticket-buying public is to continue with its patronage.  My own personal aesthetic debutante party happened over twenty years ago at a sensational exhibit of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces from the Soviet Union. These Frenchmen (and would-be Frenchmen) from the previous century were just what a budding elitist snob needed as an entry-level introduction to the joy of looking at art. At the time, my favorite was Renoir, whose oeuvre, I later discovered, was least appreciated by current art critics, allegedly because he was a bit too saccharine and sentimental—surely an unpardonable offence, if the “art world” could conceive of one.

Over the years, under the influence of the critics, I came to be just a tad suspicious of Renoir, but recently I have been rethinking things.  After all, sentimentality is unquestionably an ingredient in a full life. The problem is not that there is sentimentality, but only that it can be cloying if overdone. Sure enough, emblazoned on the wall of the Renoir room of the exhibit, were words straight from the artist’s mouth: “Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.” Without a doubt, one of the highlights of the exhibit is Renoir’s Two Sisters.

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/pr_sisters.jpg

This is a prime example of why it is necessary to go and see paintings, rather than merely look at photos in books: the colors leap out of the painting and dazzle the senses, as they twinkle in the light, an effect which is accentuated by the canvas’ unexpectedly large size. 

Another highlight, no doubt, is the canvas by Gustave Caillebotte Paris Street; Rainy Day

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/gc_paris.jpg

The painting’s large size creates quite an impression (no pun intended), which does not overwhelm the viewer on account of the artist’s choice of a muted palette. 

For those who prefer the raw to the cooked, there is always Paul Gauguin, whose Tahitian paintings line the walls of the exhibit, together with a quote of his own: “I have escaped everything that is artificial and conventional.  Here I enter into Truth, become one with nature. After the disease of civilization, life in this new world is a return to health.”

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/pg_angry.jpg

For those who have never seen a series of Monet’s paintings of the same subject at different times of the day and year, a group of six Stacks of Wheat

http://impressionists.kimbellart.org/exhibition/works/cm_wheat.jpg

should prove to be a real treat, as well a pair of paintings of Waterloo Bridge.

All in all The Impressionists is a must-see, even for those that may feel that they have had their fill of the Official Iconoclasts of the art world.

Next at the Kimbell: Love and Art in Renaissance Italy.

The Elitist Snob is a Renaissance and Classical historian who teaches at the University of North Texas.