ZURICH.- From 10 November 2017 to 28 January 2018, the Kunsthaus Zürich exclusively presents the first exhibition in Switzerland to explore the tensions in French painting between ‘academic art’ and new approaches that sought liberation from its constraints. As Academism’s influence waned during the 19th century, artists turned instead to the pursuit of individual impulses. Romanticism, Naturalism, Realism and Impressionism vied for the favour of audiences. Artists whose work was dismissed at the time are now seen as stars, and vice versa.

With a little over 100 paintings, the presentation at the Kunsthaus Zürich brings various currents of 19th-century French painting face to face, revealing not just stark contradictions but also commonalities. This more nuanced perspective on a key period in art history is an especially useful corrective to perceptions in the German-speaking world, where the reception afforded to French art has hitherto been rather one-sided.

INNOVATIVE NEOCLASSICISTS AND TRADITIONAL AVANT-GARDISTS
Romanticism, Naturalism, Realism and Impressionism are still the stylistic labels used to classify French painting of the 19th century. The artists working in these new styles – figures such as Géricault, Delacroix, Corot, Daumier, Millet, Courbet, Manet, Sisley, Monet and Renoir – turned their backs on the officially sanctioned painting of the era, with its academic and neoclassicist style. Despite their revolutionary approaches, however, some of them also have a traditional side. Highly controversial in their day, they are now hailed worldwide as ‘forerunners of Modernism’.

Other artists who were highly regarded at the time, such as Meissonier, Cabanel, Gérôme and Bouguereau, have experienced a very different fate. Today, especially in the German-speaking world, they have been largely forgotten – unjustly so, for their work is key to understanding the artistic developments of the era. Although indebted to traditional painting techniques, they were in fact highly innovative.

THE SALON: ARBITER OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE
The exhibition focuses on the years between 1820 and 1880. 1822 saw Delacroix‘s first appearance at the Salon, the official exhibition platform for artists, at which he issued a challenge to Ingres and his fellow neoclassicists; 1880 marked the end of the Salon as a state institution. The role of ‘kingmaker’ then passed to other forms of organized exhibition, the art market and the public. At the turn of the 20th century, the influence of art criticism was still every bit as great as theirs; today, it is a much less crucial determinant of artists‘ fortunes.

FIRST TIME IN SWITZERLAND
For the first time in Switzerland, this exhibition brings together some 60 artists representing various movements in French painting to create a rich and diverse panorama of the era‘s genres. Some of the exhibits are receiving their first showing in Switzerland. They include loans from the Musée du Louvre and Musée d‘Orsay in Paris, the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Art Institute, Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and others.