Precious Impressionist Pieces at Vienna’s Belvedere Museum

[Review] Although especially renowned for its Klimt masterpieces, Vienna’s Belvedere Museum possesses a compact collection of selected Impressionist works of art.

One of the world’s leading art institutions, Vienna’s Belvedere Museum possesses a comprehensive collection of works from the Middle Ages to the present. Primarily famous for its Gustav Klimt masterpieces, above all the world-renowned “The Kiss (Lovers),” its portfolio also consists of selected Impressionist canvases, including works by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, and Édouard Manet.

The Impressionists, a collective of innovative, compatible French painters, revolutionized the art world in the late nineteenth century. Dissatisfied with prevailing academic standards and stipulations, they detached from the prestigious Salon de Paris, the art show of the Parisian Académie des Beaux-Arts, and organized their own independent exhibitions. Initially ridiculed by critics due to their “unfinished,” sketchy way of painting, they increasingly received recognition from experts and the public over the course of time. Today, Impressionist pieces are highly sought-after objects, regularly attaining record prices at international art auctions.

Regarding the Belvedere Museum’s Impressionist collection, it includes, first and foremost, Monet’s much-noticed oil-on-canvas piece “The Chef,” also known as “Portrait of Père Paul,” depicting Paul Antoine Graff, owner and chef of a restaurant in French Normandy. Painted in 1882 in the typical Impressionist style — rapid and visible brushwork, sketchiness, lively character — it ranks among Monet’s few portraits ever created. Gentle and soft bluish-white pastel shades dominate the piece’s color scheme, giving the protagonist a bright and benign appearance. Initially purchased by M Knoedler & Co, a Parisian art gallery headquartered in New York, and later in the possession of the Impressionists’ major benefactor, Paul Durand-Ruel, it then made its way to Vienna in the wake of the Secession’s Impressionist Exhibition of 1903.

Manet’s “Woman in a Fur Coat” (ca. 1880), a pastel portrait of an unidentified female scantily dressed but for a fur cape, is also worth a mention. Intense color contrasts between the lady’s fair-skinned décolleté and her dark coat, as well as the blurriness of her face, clearly point toward an Impressionist style of drawing. The backdrop, consisting of leaves in various greenish shades, raises the question of whether the artist created this piece in the open air, inside a winter garden, or even indoors in front of colored wallpaper. “Woman in a Fur Coat” has been in the Belvedere Museum’s stock since 1942.

Finally, there is Degas’s pastel “Harlequin and Columbine” (ca. 1886), most probably depicting a scene of the “Harlequinade,” a musical comedy in which Harlequin, a light-hearted servant, falls in love with his female counterpart, Columbine. Degas most likely created the piece during a performance or rehearsal at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, where he produced hundreds of pictures of ballerinas throughout his career. In this pastel, consisting of light, bright colors — mainly yellow, green, and blue — the artist captured a lively moment, pinning down the motions of the two protagonists. Like Manet’s “Woman in a Fur Coat,” “Harlequin and Columbine” (which is currently not on display) has been part of the museum’s collection since 1942.

Further Impressionist masterpieces displayed at the Belvedere include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “After the Bath” (1876), Monet’s “Garden Path at Giverny” (1902, Late Impressionism), and Paul Cézanne’s “Still Life with Blue Bottle, Sugar Bowl, and Apples” (1900/1902, Late Impressionism). Although especially renowned for its Klimt showpieces, Vienna’s Belvedere Museum possesses a rather compact but nonetheless high-class, top-level collection of selected Impressionist works. Devotees of the versatile late-nineteenth-century art movement are delighted.