Turner to Monet

The National Gallery of Australia proudly presents Turner to Monet: the triumph of landscape, the most comprehensive survey of 19th century landscape paintings ever assembled.

The exhibition, from 14 March to 9 June 2008, features more than 100 landscape masterpieces by many of the greatest artists of the time. Turner to Monet reveals the genre in its full glory—from its early predominance in Britain to extraordinary Romantic manifestations in Germany, France and the rest of Europe throughout the nineteenth century. Turner to Monet shows the spread of landscape painting to new territories in Australia and the United States of America where European artists extended the Western tradition.

Paintings by some of the world’s best known and most popular artists are included in the exhibition: JMW Turner, John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Claude Monet among others. Often overlooked by art historians, German, Swiss and Scandinavian artists feature in the exhibition alongside the popular Australian artists Eugène Von Guérard, John Glover, Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton.

“This exhibition is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see works of art which have never been seen together in Australia before,” said Ron Radford Director of the National Gallery of Australia. “You won’t ever see works by all these artists together again as there isn’t a single collection in the world that has this whole gamut of 19th century landscape art.”

Works of art in the exhibition are drawn from 40 of the finest collections around the world including the Tate and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the J Paul Getty Museum in California, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Kröller-Müller Museum and the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands.

Turner to Monet: The Triumph of landscape was made possible by Art Indemnity Australia, an Australian Government program through which the Commonwealth acts as insurer in case of any loss or damage to an indemnified work of art. Without Art Indemnity Australia, the high cost of insuring significant cultural items would prohibit this major exhibition from touring to Australia.

Turner to Monet can be seen only at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.