The Oklahoma City Museum of Art presents a James C. Meade Friends’ Lecture by Dr. Jennifer A. Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900 and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Champion of the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel
Heralded today for their luminous, inventive pictures, the Impressionists were initially regarded as radicals for the bright colors and bold brushstrokes they used to capture the movement and sensations of the modern world. Their rejection of traditional subjects and methods provoked sharp criticism and deterred many collectors, but attracted Paul Durand-Ruel, a Paris art dealer who became the artists’ champion.
Durand-Ruel (1831–1922) met the Impressionists almost by accident in London. He embraced “the new painting” before it became known as Impressionism and devoted his career to supporting its artists, eventually buying more than five thousand paintings by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt, and Édouard Manet.
Such daring investment in young, unrecognized painters demanded fortitude and innovation. For forty years, Durand-Ruel tenaciously promoted the Impressionists across Europe and in the United States, creating new business strategies in the face of bankruptcies and public ridicule. The talk explores those decades in a series of key moments that reveal Durand-Ruel’s unwavering commitment to bringing the Impressionists to an international audience.
Free for Members | $5 for Non-Members. Tickets available at the door. First come, first served for theater seating. Located in the Samuel Roberts Noble Theater at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
About Dr. Jennifer A. Thompson:
Dr. Thompson joined the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Department of European Painting in 1999; throughout her career, she has played an essential role in implementing the department’s mission to interpret, display, and develop the Museum’s collections of European painting and sculpture, which span the thirteenth to twentieth centuries. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She then curated or co-curated many notable exhibitions at the Museum, including “Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting” (2015), “Van Gogh Up Clos” (2012), and “Late Renoir” (2010). She is also responsible for the collections and installations at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia and serves as the head of the European Painting department.
Image Credit: Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926). Poplars (detail), 1891. Oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Chester Dale Collection, 1951
