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Monet and the Modern City

Scaife Gallery 1 May 25–Sept. 2, 2019
A colorful, hazy painting of a bridge over a river with smoke stacks in the background.
Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, London, 1903, Carnegie Museum of Art, Acquired through the generosity of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Family

Claude Monet and his contemporaries responded to the urban industrial landscape through works that convey the power and promise of modernization. Monet and the Modern City explores the enduring theme of industry in art, capturing the essence of the atmospheric conditions of the modern industrial environment that fascinated artists such as Monet, Camille Pissarro, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Félix Buhot, and Auguste Lepère. Pittsburgh’s own industrial aesthetic is represented by works from the French printmaker Jean-Emile Laboureur’s Ten Etchings of Pittsburgh series and grandiose views of steel mills by Americans Aaron Gorson, Joseph Pennell, and Joseph Stella.

This exhibition features selections from Monet’s Waterloo Bridge: Vision and Process, an exhibition organized by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. Carnegie Museum of Art’s own Waterloo Bridge painting is presented alongside two others from the series, thanks to the Memorial Art Gallery and Worcester Art Museum. Together, these works suggest the range of moods and colors that serial painting can produce.

Monet and the Modern City is organized by Akemi May, associate curator of works on paper. The exhibition Monet’s Waterloo Bridge: Vision and Process and accompanying catalogue and technology originated at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.

Exhibition Images

A colorful, hazy painting of a bridge over a river with smoke stacks in the background.
Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, London, 1903, Carnegie Museum of Art, Acquired through the generosity of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Family
A hazy painting of a large bridge over a river, houses in the background, and smoke.
Camille Pissarro, The Great Bridge, Rouen (Le Grand Pont, Rouen) (detail), 1896, Carnegie Museum of Art
Smokestacks billow clouds over a river and industrial valley.
Johanna K. W. Hailman, Jones and Laughlin Mill, Pittsburgh, ca. 1925–1930, Carnegie Museum of Art, Bequest of Johanna K. W. Hailman
A dark and hazy painting of a mill overlooking a river.
Aaron Henry Gorson, Pittsburgh at Night, 1920, Carnegie Museum of Art, Gift of Milton Porter
A smoky portrayal of a city, showing industrial fog and the tops of densely crowded buildings.
Auguste Lepère, Quartier des Gobelins, 1889–1890, Carnegie Museum of Art
Sketch of the Pittsburgh skyline.
Jean-Emile Laboureur, The Skyline from the River, from the series Ten Etchings of Pittsburgh, 1905, Carnegie Museum of Art, Gift of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

Support

Major support for this exhibition is provided by Ritchie Battle and Elizabeth Hurtt Branson and Douglas Branson. Additional support is provided by the James H. and Idamae B. Rich Art Exhibition Endowment.

Presenting Sponsor

Citizens Bank

Media Sponsor

Table Magazine