"From Renoir to Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée de l'Orangerie"
2000-06-01 until 2000-10-15
Montreal Museum of Fine Art
Montreal, QC, CA Canada

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is to mark the new millennium with a major international exhibition entitled From Renoir to Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée de l'Orangerie, which will run from June 1 to October 15, 2000. This magnificent project will be a milestone in the history of the Museum and of Montreal at the dawn of the 21st century, and will bring wsignificant economic benefits and tourist traffic to the Greater Montreal region.

The exhibition will feature eighty-one masterpieces from the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection of the Musée national de l'Orangerie in Paris: fourteen paintings by Cézanne, six Derains, four Marie Laurencins, ten Matisses, five Modiglianis, one Monet, seven Picassos, seventeen Renoirs, six Douanier Rousseaus, one Sisley, six Soutines, three Utrillos and one Van Dongen. These paintings give a wide-ranging view of the great French masters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and represent a body of work that equals, if not surpasses, the North American collection of Dr. Barnes.

The Orangerie building is to undergo major renovations beginning this fall: the Walter/Guillaume collection will be sent on a once-only tour of Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States. Montreal and Fort Worth, Texas are the only North American stops on this prestigious tour. These paintings are already familiar to the general public, since they are among the artists' best-known masterpieces.

The Walter/Guillaume collection was started by Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), one of the greatest dealers of his time, whose most celebrated customer was Dr. Barnes of Philadelphia. After Guillaume's death, his widow continued to add to the collection with her second husband, Jean Walter, a wealthy architect and industrialist whom she married in 1941. In 1959 an 1963, Mme Walter donated her collection to the Musées nationaux de France, and it was presented to the Orangerie in 1966.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Canada

Other Important Exhibitions in Canada