“It’s Breathtaking”: NGV Announces a Second Run of Its Monumental French Impressionism Exhibition
Does it feel like déjà vu? A restaging of 2021’s exhibition is coming. But this isn’t just rinse repeat – seeing 16 Monets in one room is still incredibly rare.
by Emma Joyce · BroadsheetWe hate to dredge up lockdown memories, but remember winter 2021? Melbourne had a landmark exhibition at the NGV with more than 100 masterpieces on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA Boston). Around 60,000 people saw the artworks by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and more, before lockdowns five and six closed the gallery’s doors.
Today, the NGV has announced it’s bringing back French Impressionism for winter 2025. And there’ll be additional works never shown in Australia before.
“It’s a cracker exhibition,” Dr Ted Gott, senior curator of international art, tells Broadsheet. “It takes us back to what Paris was like at that time and your jaw just hits the ground with every room you walk into.”
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Just like before, this restaged version of French Impressionism will have more than 100 artworks on display by Monet, Renoir, Edgar Degas, Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot and others – all exclusively on loan from MFA Boston.
“What’s not to love about a show that has 16 Monets in it?” says Gott, beaming. “It’s breathtaking. It’s also incredibly rare. If we were doing a group show of impressionism from museums from all over the world, we simply couldn’t afford to bring that many works together, and incredibly MFA Boston has 35 – and they’re able to lend us 16.”
The Monet paintings cover a 30-year period and feature scenes from the Normandy coast and his garden in Giverny. Bostonians visited France during the movement and works owned by individuals were later acquired by the museum.
“Bostonians just loved it,” explains Gott. “They started off acquiring works from the Barbizon School [roughly 1830–70], which is the period before impressionism. They all stayed at local inns in France and chewed the fat by the fire with artists at night. The impressionists changed everything – they threw out the rulebook. They brought in new light, new colour, they painted outside, which was radical at the time. And they stand for revolution and independence. [The paintings] make us feel liberated just looking at them and they retain a sense of rebellion.”
Part of the exhibition will include early works by Monet and Eugène Boudin, as well as painters of the Barbizon School. “There are 14 paintings in this show by Boudin, and we have a whole room that looks at where Monet’s style comes from. Monet’s on the record as saying ‘I owe everything to Boudin’.”
Some of Gott’s favourites include Gustave Caillebotte’s Fruit Displayed on a Stand. “It reminds me of travelling to Japan and seeing every piece of fruit carefully wrapped up in one of their department stores.” He also loves Pissarro’s Sunlight on the Road, Pontoise, which he says “looks like it’s painted with butter or ice-cream”.
New works not previously shown in Australia include Self-portrait by Victorine Meurent – Édouard Manet’s favourite model and a successful painter in her own right. There’ll also be 11 works by Edgar Degas, including the not-seen-here-before Degas’s Father Listening to Lorenzo Pagans Playing the Guitar.
There’ll be three impressionist pieces from the NGV collection too, including Morisot’s Embroidery and Paul Signac’s Gasometers at Clichy. “There’s also a fantastic Van Gogh done just before his death,” says Gott. “It’s a gutsy one that makes your heart race – and this show is full of that bravura.”
French Impressionism is on display from June 6 to October 5, 2025 at NGV International.