Exhibition Vive l’impressionnisme!

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first ’Exhibition of the Impressionists’, Vive l’impressionnisme! Masterpieces from Dutch Collections brings together some of the best Impressionist paintings from Dutch public and private collections alongside pastels, sculptures, drawings and prints, also from Dutch collections. Artists include Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley and Paul Cézanne, who all used loose brushwork and bright colours to capture how they perceived light at a specific and changeable moment – an impression.

When and how did these French artworks come to the Netherlands? And was the Netherlands ready to embrace a modern art movement from Paris? The exhibition shows how the visionary mindset and resolute dealings of a number of individuals, including Theo van Gogh, resulted in a range of outstanding works making their way to the Netherlands. It also asks: which masterpieces slipped through the net, and how can this be explained?