Exhibition draws links between French impressionists and US artists

Edgar Degas Claude Monet Arshile Gorky Edward Hopper Mary Stevenson Cassatt Deal or No Deal? Impressionist & Modern Art The Hit Parade

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Displayed in the Museum of American Art in the rural village of Giverny, the exhibitions give a fascinating insight into the links between the French impressionists and the schools of art which sprang up in the United States through the 20th century.

In the latter half of the 1900s, as the fame of the French impressionists grew, many Americans flocked to Paris hoping to learn from those artists they so admired by drawing on both their inspiration and their teachings.

Giverny, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Paris, the home of Claude Monet, became a magnet for hundreds of young artists, who were first welcomed by the artist until he tired of the invasion of his pastoral paradise.

The museum, funded by the private Terra Foundation for American Art, has used part of its own collection as the building blocks for two of the three exhibitions which opened on Friday.

The smallest, but perhaps the most intimate, is a collection of the work of the artist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), a friend of Edgar Degas. The exhibition runs until July 3.

Although she never achieved the same fame as other artists of the time, struggling for recognition in what was a male-dominated world, a glimpse at her prints and aquatints shows clear links to the impressionists.

But unlike Degas and others fascinated by the Paris' nightlife, the world of prostitutes was not one from which she, as a woman, could draw her subjects.

Instead she focused in her complex, layered prints drawn on copper plates and in her paintings on the relationship between mother and child, but depicted which such intimacy that her pictures are far from the traditional, pure Madonna-like images.

She "tears the mother-child relationship from religious references by this sensual presence of the child" which is embraced almost like a lover, said museum curator Sophie Levy.

The second exhibition "The passage to Paris: American artists in France from 1860-1930" which runs until October 30 shows how young US artists adopted and redefined the techniques of the impressionists.

Many drew inspiration from the same subjects -- the gritty streets of urban Paris with its cafes and bars, the picturesque French countryside, the vast, rolling coastlines and of course Monet's beloved Giverny.

"At the beginning they could approach Monet, but afterwards he closed his doors and stayed in his garden," said Levy.

The young hopefuls even employed some of the same techniques, bright colours, loose brushwork, dappled sun and shade effects.

But many of the newcomers took their works a stage further, thus the dark, somber tones in the Paris streetlifes scenes of some artists such as Robert Henri earned them the name of the Ashcan school.

The last exhibition "From Homer to Hopper: Drawings and Watercolours" shows some 75 paintings lent by Princeton University Art Museum out of its collection of about 1,300 to the Giverny centre. It is on display in Europe for the first time until July 3.

The display moves chronologically from the start of the 20th century up until the expressionism and pop-art of the works of such artists as Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock.

Levy admitted it had been hard to hang the final collection as the works had no obvious links, other than that they were all American artists.

As in any collection, "you have to find a visibility and a cohesion," she added.

Museum of American Art, 99 rue Claude Monet, 27620 Giverny. Open Tuesday though Sundays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Entrance 5.50 euros, 12-18 years 3 euros, under 12 free. Tel: 33 2 32 51 94 65.

By Jo Bidle, Copyright AFP, 2005