Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee joins us in Melbourne as part of the NGV Observations series for an exclusive talk on the birth of Impressionism through the lens of war, strife and heartbreak.
In 1870–71, in the grips of the Franco-Prussian War, Paris was rocked by a siege and starvation, culminating in surrender to Germany. The city was then roiled by an internal revolution – the Commune – and a violent civil war, as government forces fought to re-take the city.
This was the Paris that many Impressionist artists experienced firsthand. With a particular focus on the experiences of the painters Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet, but drawing from across the NGV Collection including paintings, works on paper and photography, as well as works from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Smee will explore this period in history through art, discussing the effect of these traumatic events, and of the period’s political climate, on their art, and the Impressionist movement more broadly.
Sebastian Smee is in Melbourne for the NGV Observations series – an annual program of in person and live-streamed events, as well as publications and online videos, that invites close examination of works and periods in the NGV Collection, through the eyes of international researchers, curators, and writers.
The NGV Observations series is generously supported by an anonymous donor.
Art and design are windows to the worlds of their creators, times and places. They can pull the past into our present, providing glimpses into different societies, values, and innovations. The NGV series Observations positions the NGV Collection as such a window – offering perspectives on art and design, of the past and the present, to explore how creativity impacts our understanding and experience of the world.
The NGV Observations series was named after the first instructional text on painting believed to have been written by a woman artist, a 1633 manuscript by English artist Mary Beale. Observations invites close examination of works and periods in the NGV Collection, through the eyes of international researchers, curators, and writers. Spanning in person and live-streamed events, as well as publications and online videos, we can not only learn about how art and design is made, but also how it chronicles, reflects and responds to its social and cultural context – and what this might illuminate about life today.
Sebastian Smee is art critic for the Washington Post and the author of Paris in Ruins: Love, War and the Birth of Impressionism in 2024. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2011 while at the Boston Globe and his previous books include The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art in 2016.
Presented alongside the French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibition, this program will be held in person and live-streamed.