Monet: Impression Sunrise

National Gallery of Australia

7 June – 1 September 2019 

Featuring Claude Monet’s pioneering painting Impression, Soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise) 1872, from which Impressionism takes its name, this exclusive exhibition brings together works from the impressionist master and other significant artists to examine the founding of an art movement—a defining moment in art history.

Impression, Soleil levant, which rarely leaves the museum walls in Paris, will be coming to a newly designed exhibition space at the NGA this winter, along with some forty impressionist and related paintings from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, the Tate, and Australian and New Zealand collections.

Alongside Monet’s masterpieces are key paintings by JMW Turner, whose early works inspired Monet, James McNeill Whistler, Alfred Sisley and Eugène Boudin, among others.

The works reveal the formative characteristics of Impressionism—depiction of light, purer colour and capturing the momentary view—by a new generation of artists who abandoned their studios for the world outside.

Monet: Impression Sunrise is an unmissable opportunity to see a masterful painting that became emblematic of a cultural movement and trace its influence on the course of art history.

Claude Monet
Impression, sunrise [Impression, soleil levant]1872
oil on canvas
Gift of Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy 1940, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Claude Monet
Les Tuileries1876
oil on canvas
Gift of Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy 1940, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Claude Monet
On the beach at Trouville [Sur la plage à Trouville]1870
oil on canvas
Bequest of Michel Monet 1966, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Alfred Sisley
Spring near Paris. Apple trees in blossom [Printemps aux environs de Paris. Pommiers en fleur]1879
oil on canvas
Gift of Victorine and Eugène Donop de Monchy, 1940, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris