Tag: Museum of Fine Arts

Currently open at the Museum of Fine Arts in Second Life is the third part of a series celebrating les trois grandes dames of French Impressionism. Having featured Marie Bracquemond in the first part of the exhibition (see: The Museum of Fine Arts in Second Life) and then Berthe Morisot in the second (see: Berthe Morisot at the Museum of Fine Arts), this final part turns to the work of Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926).

Cassatt is perhaps the most unusual of the grand dames, in that she was born in the United States, the daughter of a stockbroker of French descent. Her parents were able to afford to provide her with a well-rounded education that included travel and study in Europe, where she gained her first exposure to music and the arts. It was at this time that she likely gained her first exposure to  some of the great masters including Edgar Degas, would later be both colleague and mentor.

Returning to the United States, she started to formally study art – albeit it against her parent’s wishes – a path that would lead her back to France in her early 20s. At the time, women were unable to the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris – one of the most influential schools of art in the country – and so sought be be privately tutored. It was this bias against women in a foremost school of art that likely further reinforced Cassatt’s support for equal rights, which formed as much a part of her life as her art.

Learning under the tutelage of Jean-Léon Gérôme,  Charles Chaplin and Thomas Couture, it was at this time (1868-1870) Cassatt had her first pieces of art accepted for exhibition. Following a visit home to her family in 1870/71, Cassatt returned to France where she enjoyed further success with exhibiting her art, although she became increasingly cynical and outspoken about the male bias against women artists event in many of the art salaons. In return, she was increasingly seen as “troublesome” for her views and straightforwardness – something that perhaps moved her more towards the Impressionist movement, who were just starting to mount their own independent (or “fringe”, as those practising more accepted forms of art may have regarded them) exhibitions.

It was at this time that she came directly into contact with Edgar Degas, who invited her to join their exhibitions and movement. With Degas she formed a life-long, if often strained, friendship, which included experimenting with form and colour, and she continued to enjoy moderate success.

In 1894, Gustave Geffroy referred to Cassatt as one of les trois grandes dames (the three great ladies) of Impressionism alongside Bracquemond and Morisot. However, by that time, Cassatt no longer regarded herself as part of any movement, but rather as an experimentalist and teacher. Similarly, her popular reputation is based on an extensive series of rigorously drawn and tenderly observed paintings and prints on the theme of the mother and child, works which she embarked upon after she had started to move away from the impressionist movement – which is not to diminish her role within the movement.

The exhibition of Cassatt’s art at the Museum of Fine Arts can – as with the previous exhibitions of Bracquemond’s and Morisot’s work can be found in the pavilion buildings, behind the main gallery. It is broadly split into two parts: the pavilion to the left (as you face them) is predominantly focused on Cassatt’s  work from the 1870s through her time in the impressionist movement, while the pavilion to the right  focuses more on her later work including the aforementioned series of mother and child pieces.

As is the practice at the gallery, the paintings are drawings are presented with wall-mounted information cards, and touching any reproduction will display the information relating to the piece in local chat. All the the pieces are also offered in scale with one another – which, as I’ve noted in past reviews, can make some pieces hard to fully appreciate. To counter this, the gallery offers some of Cassatt’s drawings to scale – but with a larger-scale version alongside to offer the opportunity for clearer appreciation. It’s a simple, but effective approach.

One of the attractive features of these exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts is that that bring together works  that might never all be seen together under one roof; as such, this is again an exhibition that connoisseurs of fine art will not want to miss.

SLurl Details

• Museum of Fine Arts (Jieut, rated Moderate)

In September 2019, I toured the Museum of Fine Arts with curator Tonem (see: The Museum of Fine Arts in Second Life), and was impressed with the care and attention that has been put into the gallery’s operation in making it as much akin to the experience of visiting a physical world art museum / gallery as possible.

Since that original article was posted, the team behind the Museum of Fine Arts have been continuing to develop the museum’s grounds, and also recently opened the second part of their exhibition of art by les trois grandes dames of French Impressionism, so this gave me a reason to pop back and spend time once more at the museum.

Having featured the art of Marie Bracquemond in the first part of the grades dames exhibit, this second part features the work of Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (1841- 1895), and it can be found in the Lindal Kidd terrace gallery space, which had now been increased to two side-by-side pavilions behind the main museum building (just enter the main building and past through the ground-floor exhibition spaces and exit through the rear doors to find the terrace).

Morisot was born into a family enmeshed in the arts: her father, while local administrator, was trained in architecture, while her mother was the great-niece of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, one of the most prolific Rococo painters of the ancien régime. So, even allowing for art being a natural part of her education, she and her sisters perhaps received additional encouragement in pursuing it. This encouragement continued through her early career, which brought her into contact with artists such as Édouard Manet and Oscar-Claude Monet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

Her own work was not publicly exhibited for the first time until 1864 – largely because she was a hard self-critic, destroying a lot of her early pieces because she regarded them as not being good enough – particularly her early work in oil paints, a medium she particularly struggled with initially. However, from the early 1870s Morisot began to be exhibited more regularly, gained a patron – private art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. By the late 1870s, she was regarded as the “one real Impressionist in this group”, and judged Morisot among the best of the impressionists by many art critics.

What is particularly engaging about the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts is that it amounts to perhaps the large single gathering of Morisot’s work to be seen in the world today outside of the Louvre in Paris. As such, it is a must-see for anyone with a love of classical art, whilst again demonstrating the uniqueness of SL itself as a means to present such a collection to what amounts to a global audience.

In keeping with the Museum’s approach, individual pieces are offered to scale to one another and of a size equating to how they would appear in the physical world when standing before them. This can make individual paintings a little small when viewing them and call into use some steady Alt-camming, but the effort is worth it. In addition, each is displayed with an information card giving the title, date, medium and provenance of the piece – all of which can be viewed in local chat by clicking on a painting.

This is another engaging, engrossing exhibition of physical world art, offering a unique opportunity to appreciate the work of one of the great names of the French Impressionist movement.

SLurl Details

• Museum of Fine Arts (Jieut, rated Moderate)