THE NEXT film in the Art on Screen series is The Impressionists – and the Man Who Made Them. Drawing on the Inventing Impressionism exhibition which recently opened at the National Gallery London in collaboration with the Musée du Luxembourg, Musée d’Orsay and Philadelphia Museum of Art, this documentary focuses on the 19th-century Parisian art collector, Paul Durand-Ruel.
It was Durand-Ruel’s financial backing and refusal to give up that helped to establish Impressionism as a movement, and one that would grow to be one of the most recognisable and most-loved in Western art.
The documentary charts Durand-Ruel’s relationship with artists such as Manet , Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Renoir and Pissarro and their early struggles to be accepted at the Salon, the derision that followed their first exhibition in Paris and Durand-Ruel’s decision to exhibit them in the US.
Alongside the opportunity to view some of the Impressionists’ most famous work on the big screen, Robert Lindsay voices diary extracts from Durand-Ruel and we also get glimpses of the National Gallery’s preparation for the exhibition.
Curators Anne Distel, Sylvie Patry (Musee D’Orsay), Chris Riopelle (National Gallery) and Jennifer Thompson (Philadelphia Museum of Art) are interviewed as well as Rachel Campbell-Johnson (The Times), Philip Hook (director at Sotheby’s and author of The Ultimate Trophy), and Durand-Ruel’s ancestors – great-grandson Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and great-great-granddaughter Flavie Durand-Ruel.
l The Impressionists – and the Man Who Made Them: Sat, June 3 and 4 at 7.30pm and Sun at 2.30pm at Cinema Nouveaus in Joburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.