French painting

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Visitors to the left coast this summer can get a taste of the left bank, thanks to exhibitions on view at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The de Young Museum is showing the stunning Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, which includes some one hundred iconic examples from that Paris museum, which is partially closed for refurbishment. (Within weeks of the show closing on September 6, the de Young will open Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, on view September 25 to January 18, 2011.) Meanwhile, across town, the Legion of Honor has mounted a complementary exhibition entitled Impressionist Paris: City of Light, which can be seen until September 26. Almost two hundred paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs offer a glimpse of life in the city that became the cultural capital of Europe in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, attracting—and inspiring—legions of painters, sculptors, writers, and composers. www.famsf.org

Photo: The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1832–1883), 1866. Musée D’Orsay, Paris.

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