From April 13 and until September 22, come and admire the new exhibition and the works of Augustin Rouart at the Villa Montebello Museum !
The exhibition opens the doors to the world of Augustin Rouart, populated by great names in impressionism, and shows the journey of an artist who borrows from this revolutionary artistic movement his taste for freedom and modernity to open up to an original and joyful painting.
Augustin Rouart was born into a family of artists and collectors. He grew up surrounded by painters and paintings. His grandfather Henri Rouart was Degas' great friend. He had learned painting from Corot, which he then collected. His collection included a number of paintings by Cals, Toulouse-Lautrec, Courbet, Daumier, Renoir, Pissaro. Through marriages, the Rouart family is related to many artists such as Eugène Manet, Berthe Morisot, Julie Manet, Henri Lerolle, Paul Valéry, Ernest Chausson. It's a whole world that meets each other frequently, or even lives at the same address. In his family, painting is second nature. With his brother, he represents the third generation of artists. However, Augustin Rouart managed to break away from what could have been an overwhelming influence of impressionism and found a style of his own, an original pictorial form. What he retained from the Impressionists was not the touch but the feeling of freedom and the expression of an art well anchored in its time and imbued with modernity.
The exhibition aims to show, first of all, the artists who made up this world in which Augustin Rouart grew up and trained. We find there some of the great figures of impressionism, as well as of the literary or musical world of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century: Henri Rouart, Ernest Rouart, Berthe Morisot, Maurice Denis, Julie Manet, Paul Valéry, Edgar Degas, Henri Lerolle…
Secondly, the exhibition will show the original work that Augustin Rouart was able to develop during his career, how he arrived at this joyful and happy painting. The aim will also be to highlight the full variety of his artistic work, both in painting and through his ceramic creations.
Finally, the exhibition will be an opportunity to reveal much more personal work: in letters addressed to his son – Jean-Marie Rouart, from the Académie française –, he recounts through drawing the adventures of Nounourse, a sort of gang -drawn in serials.
Opening days and times:
- From February 26 to May 31 and from October 1 to December 31
Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 14 p.m. to 17:30 p.m.
Weekends, school holidays and public holidays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 14 p.m. to 17:30 p.m. - From June 1 to September 30
Wednesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 14 p.m. to 17:30 p.m. - Weekly closing on Monday and Tuesday.