Two Masterpieces: the exhibition “Marking the 150th Anniversary of the First Impressionist Exhibition” opened in the General Staff building

The exhibition in the Claude Monet Hall (Hall 403 of the General Staff building) features two masterpieces of Impressionism: Camille Pissarro’s Town Park in Pontoise (1874) and Claude Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines in Paris (1873).

This April saw the 150th anniversary of the opening day of the exhibition of the Société anonyme coopérative des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs, which has gone down in history as the first Impressionist exhibition. That event is associated with the emergence not only of the term “Impressionism” and, consequently, the name for the artistic grouping, but also of a new method of painting, a fresh way of seeing the world.

Today in Russia there are two paintings from that momentous exhibition. The pair of works by outstanding exponents of Impressionism have come together in the display in the General Staff building, demonstrating the artists’ two different creative approaches.

“Today we are opening an exhibition of two paintings in a splendid museum context. I think this is exactly what the Impressionists sought to avoid. Yet here they have ended up in a museum, and even these two paintings create a whole museum event. This is a new round in the comprehension of our history and the history of art,” Mikhail Piotrovsky, Hermitage General Director, said at the opening of the exhibition.

Ilya Doronchenkov, Deputy General Director of the Pushkin Museum, commented on the collaboration between the two museums: “Our joint exhibitions are a sign of great trust in each other and evidence of the good relations between the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum. Although museums like the Pushkin Museum are reluctant to part with masterpieces such as Claude Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines, I had no doubt that we should agree to take part in this exhibition.”

The exhibition-event in the General Staff building does not aspire to recreate the visual look of the first Impressionist exhibition but is rather an invitation to reflect on the context in which that event took place and in which the artists were working.

The exhibition curator is the researcher Olga Dmitriyevna Leontyeva, Keeper of French painting of the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries, Chief Curator of the Department of Western European Fine Art.

A publication has been prepared for the exhibition with an essay by Olga Leontyeva “Marking the 150th Anniversary of the First Impressionist Exhibition”.

The exhibition can be visited until 21 July 2024 by holders of entry tickets to the State Hermitage’s General Staff building.

The General Sponsor of the exhibition is Rosseti,