The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA is currently hosting the exhibition Impressionists on the Water. The show, which features over 90 paintings, prints, models and photographs, explores how France’s waterways and oceans influenced artists such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Georges Seurat. These key Impressionists spent a considerable amount of time at sea, on riverboats and on floating studios attempting to capture the atmospheric quality of water and the unique way that light played on its surface.
Daniel Finamore, the Peabody Essex Museum's Russell W. Knight Curator of Maritime Art and History, said, "While the Impressionists have been popularly celebrated for generations, this exhibition introduces aspects of their work not often explored. Rather than viewing Impressionism as a moment of schism and revolution, we see how artists handled maritime subject matter from the birth of the movement, through its creative evolution and the lasting impact of the Impressionists' vision of the sea in art."
Impressionists on the Water will be on view through February 17, 2014.