Seeing beyond the Masters Presented by Roger Benjamin
Ticket includes entry to Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel, Art Dealer Among the Artists.
How did ‘Impressionism’ come into being? Under what circumstances did it spread to become the most pervasive mode of painterly representation from the 1880s for a century and more? One answer in the ground-breaking Geelong exhibition is to present the dealer-collector – Paul Durand-Ruel – who did more than any other to popularise Impressionist vision.The second, delightful move is to present the works of inspired second-generation French Impressionists like Maufra, Moret and André, little known in Australia, but fine artists indeed. The lecture will confront historical issues raised by the Geelong display, at a time - 150 years after the movement began - when new studies present the ‘global’ aspect of Impressionism from Russia and Japan to Australia and Chile.
About Roger Benjamin
Roger Benjamin taught French art for many years at the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney, where he is Emeritus Professor of Art History. His publications include Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism and French North Africa (Berkeley, 2003); Renoir and Algeria (Princeton, 2003); “Tom Roberts and Friends at the Alhambra” (AANZJA, 2015), and “Arthur Streeton’s Venice” in Arthur Streeton (AGNSW, 2020).