Corot to Braque [antikvár]

The Muséum of Fine Arts has recently embarked on a program of rénovation of its galleries and storage areas, the installation of a climate control system, and the building of a new wing. Préparation for this extensive work has led each department to reexamine its collections and to consider the possibility of sharing some of them with other American muséums during the time that they would otherwise be inaccessible to the public. This was, in part, the genesis of the present exhibition of French paintings of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, chosen from the holdings of the Museum's Department of Paintings. It is hoped that this will be fol-lowed by other exhibitions from the permanent collections to be shared with various institutions, thus making outstanding works of art available to a wider public in other parts of the country and abroad. A long history of astute private collecting in Boston and the public-spirited tradition of Bostonians donating their French paintings to the Muséum, as well as a con-tinuous policy of purchasing, have given the Muséum of Fine Arts a particularly rich collection in which most of the major artists of the period are well represented. The long-standing appréciation of French art and civiliza-tion by Bostonians is discussed in détail by Alexandra Murphy in her essay in this catalogue. The exhibition is chiefly the work of Anne L. Poulet, who played the major rôle in selecting the paintings, or-ganized the efforts of the Muséum staff, coordinated the tour, and wrote the introduction and the entries for the catalogue. We are greatly indebted to her and to John Walsh, Jr., Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of Paintings, who has given his enthusiastic support to the exhibition from the very beginning, and to his staff for their efforts to create an exhibition of superb quality. Elizabeth H. Jones and her assistants in Conservation have spared no pains to make each painting look its best, for which we are grateful. This project could not have been realized without the support of a generous grant from the National Endow-ment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., a Federal agency. They have made it possible for the exhibition to travel to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Denver Art Museum, the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, and to the Phoenix Art Museum. As a result, Boston's French paintings will be seen and enjoyed by a large audience in the southeastern, central, and western regions of the United States. The Museum of Fine Arts is deeply gateful also to the Nippon Television Corporation of Japan, which shared in the expenses of the production of the exhibition and underwrote the exhibition's travel to three Japanese cities during five months in 1979. It is the second exhibition of this kind from Boston sponsored by NTV, and they have made it possible for the Japanese public to be-come familiar with many important works of art from the Boston Museum. It is hoped that this precedent of international Cooperation with a corporate sponsor will be repeated with equal success in the future. Jan Fontein Director This exhibition has been assembled at an exciting time for the Museum of Fine Arts, during which a largely new staff of curators has had the pleasure of rediscovering one of the world's great collections of paintings. Weekly inventory sessions in the galleries and storerooms during the past year have confirmed what we had onlydared to guess: that Boston's familiar European paintings are part of a huge collection that is even more distinguished than it had seemed. The storerooms have not always been easy to visit(owingto conditions that are soon to change) and for several decades few paintings have been rotated from storage to the galleries to give a notion of the depth and variety of the collection. Looked at fully and syste-matically, Boston's French pictures in particular provide a lively and nearly complete account of the contending forces of the nineteenth century, a visual history that is hardly rivaled by any American museum. Happily, the National Endowment for the Arts, always on the qui vive for ways to bring big museums and smaller ones to-gether, has given us a chance, during renovation of the galleries and storerooms, to send an important group of French paintings to audiences in the South, the Rocky Mountains, Oklahoma, and the Southwest, to share the pride and excitement of our rediscoveries. Anne Poulet was helped unstintingly by dozens of peo-ple on the Museum staff, particularly by every last mem-ber of the Paintings Department. Elizabeth H. Jones, conservator of paintings, assisted by Brigitte Smith and Jean Woodward, aided in the selection of works and su-pervised the complex conservation task from beginning to end, including the treatment of some fifty pictures by Katrina Yanderlip. Scott Schaefer and Laura Luckey, assistant curators, helped with logistics, and Robert Starek, technician, did many months of painstaking work to repair and secure the frames. Rushton Potts, a vol-unteer from the staff, assisted Mrs. Poulet in research on a number of paintings, and Alexandra Murphy, research assistant, whose valuable catalogue essay on the collecting of French art in Boston speaks for itself, pro-vided ail sorts of practical and scholarly advice. For their work on this catalogue we are especially grateful to Carl Zahn, who designed it and supervised its production; to Judy Spear, who edited it with sensi-tivity and conscience; and to Elizabeth Prelinger, whose knowledge of French and art history made her typing of the manuscript particularly valuable. From the outset, Linda Thomas, registrar, lent her ex-perienced hand to arrangements for transportation and insurance, scheduling, recordkeeping, and packing; the latter was done by Michael Crivaro with a great deal of care. Lisa Simon of the Development Office dealt effec-tively with our colleagues at the National Endowment for the Arts; Wayne Lemmon, the Museum's photog-rapher, made excellent new photographs of all the paintings, which are partly responsible for the quality of the color reproductions in this catalogue; and Nancy Allen and her staff in the Library were more hospitable and helpful than we had any right to expect. John Walsh, Jr. Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of Paintings