DENVER.- Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism celebrates the great outdoors with some of the finest examples of mid- and late-19th century French and American landscape paintings. Organized by the Brooklyn Museum of Art with works from its own collection, this traveling exhibition offers a broad survey of landscape painting as practiced by renowned artists including Monet, Courbet, Daubigny, Renoir and Sargent. Opening at the Denver Art Museum on June 13, 2008, Landscapes features 40 paintings and will continue through September 7, 2008. Denver is the only venue for Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism in the western United States.

“The Impressionists continued the tradition of pleinair landscape painting, leaving us exquisite ‘impressions’ of changing skies and vibrant atmospheres,” said Angelica Daneo, Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture and local curator of the exhibition. “This rich selection of landscapes brings to life the art of immediacy and movement, and of light and color.”

Ranging from the 1850s to the 20th century, the works in the show pay homage to color, and showcase the visible brushstrokes, open composition and emphasis on light for which the Impressionist movement is known. Some of the earliest works on display include Charles-François Daubigny’s The River Seine at Mantes (c. 1856) and Gustave Courbet’s Isolated Rock (1862). Other notable works in the show include Monet’s The Doge’s Palace at Venice, one of several paintings created during the artist’s storied visit to Venice in 1908, and Dolce Far Niente (1907), by American Impressionist John Singer Sargent.

“Impressionist” artists were dubbed such by Louis Leroy, an art critic of the time, disparaging the Monet work entitled Impression, Sunrise. But the term soon came to describe paintings that gave “impressions” of the surrounding world – seemingly spontaneous and rapidly executed portraits, landscapes and cityscapes. The exhibition includes the expected landscape such as trees, rivers and flowers, but also trains, boats, bridges and factories: typical traits of the modern world. Working with natural light, the Impressionists used bright colors that were applied in short, broken brushstrokes. The Impressionist painters were fascinated with the relationship between color and light.