For Immediate Release

River Scenes of France Paintings and Drawings of The 19th and 20th Centuries (French: 1875-1947) November 10 - December 19 Wildenstein & Co. is pleased to announce an exhibition entitled River Scenes of France - Paintings and Drawings of the 19th and 20th Centuries, which opens at the gallery on November 10 and runs through February 6, 1999. Among the artists featured in the show celebrating the beauty of France's picturesque network of rivers and canals are the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Eugène Boudin, Gustave Caillebotte, Stanislas Lépine and Alfred Sisley. "The river scenes presented here are, for the most part, the work of what the famous art critic Jules Castagnary called the 'great army of landscape painters' who were so predominant in the official and non-official Salons of Paris in the last half of the nineteenth century," says Guy Wildenstein, President of Wildenstein & Co. "Many of the artists presented here were born in the valley of the Seine; for example, Monet and Boudin were natives of Le Havre and Gustave Hayet, another artist featured in the show, hailed from Pontoise. Other artists owned property in the area. In every case, a considerable portion of these painters' works had as its subject the waterways of France." France owes much of its appeal to the beauty of its landscape and its special blend of industrialization and ecological balance. The nation's many rivers contribute significantly to this phenomenon, providing a vital contribution to its economy -- the Seine, for example, links Paris to the sea -- as well as creating a vast but easily accessible recreational area, graced by a plethora of sites remarkable for their historical importance and beauty. The subjects here range from the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris (paintings by Albert Marquet, Maximilien Luce, and Albert Lebourg) to many locations celebrated in histories of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The Ile de La Grande Jatte, for example, is represented by a small pen and ink drawing by Georges Seurat related to his masterpiece in Chicago and by a bucolic scene by Stanislas Lépine. There are two depictions of the area of Pontoise, a town on the Oise, including a masterful drawing by Pissarro. The section of the Seine near Monet's home at Giverny is represented by three works, including a frosty depiction of the ice floes near Port-Villez and a view of the village of Vétheuil, bathed in the orange-pink afterglow of sunset. In the latter picture can be seen Monet's botin, or floating studio, in which the indefatigable painter went in search of inspiration. Also represented in the show is the river Loue in the Jura region of France, the subject of paintings by Gustave Courbet and his Swiss follower Cherubino Patà. French rivers -- the Seine, the Oise, the Marne, the Loing and the Loue -- are seen in a variety of seasons and weather conditions, from a moody panorama by Sisley to Marquet's brilliant view of a Paris quai. The paintings and drawings in the exhibition are distinguished by a range of styles -- Realism as practiced by Courbet and Antoine Vollon, Pointillism exemplified by such masterworks as Maximilian Luce's monumental view of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, and the Fauve technique of certain early works by Marquet. Finally, the life and labor of the French river community, which have undergone substantially little change in the past 150 years, are commemorated by Guillaumin's La Seine Charenton and a lively figure study by Théophile Steinlen. River Scenes of France - Paintings and Drawings of 19th and 20th Centuries runs from November 10 through December 19. The gallery is open to the public free of charge, Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wildenstein will be closed November 26-28 for the Thanksgiving holiday. FOR PHOTOGRAPHS AND FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT ROBIN WAGGE at RUBENSTEIN ASSOCIATES (212)843-8006, e-mail: rwagge@rubenstein.com or RITA ROBBINS at WILDENSTEIN & COMPANY (212)879-0500, e-mail: pr_info@wildenstein.com