“Although not an Impressionist, the American [painter] Whistler maintained close links with Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, who he helped to exhibit in London. He studied with Monet and Renoir at Charles Gleyre’s academy,” said Philippe Platel, director of the Normandie impressionniste festival. The exhibit “Whistler, l’effet papillon” (Whistler, the Butterfly Effect) is part of the festival. A cosmopolitan painter celebrated during his lifetime, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) wore a dandy suit, monocle and characteristic white streak in his hair. A friend of Stéphane Mallarmé and Oscar Wilde, and a Proustian model for the painter Elstir in the novel In Search of Lost Time, he influenced his contemporaries and followers to such an extent that the term “Whistlerism” was coined.

Initially inspired by the realism of Edouard Manet and Gustave Courbet, his paintings slowly evolved towards abstraction. This season, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen is showcasing one of his most emblematic figurative paintings, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, also known as Portrait of Artist’s Mother, held at the Musée d’Orsay. Works by Monet, Jacques-Emile Blanche and Paul-César Helleu, who were all active in Normandy, are also part of the exhibit.

More surprisingly, the exhibit includes three paintings by Gustav Klimt and a work by Edvard Munch. “Whistler’s aura extended throughout Europe,” said Platel. The path toward the disappearance of the figure is illustrated by works by Félix Vallotton and Eugène Carrière (“Place Clichy, la nuit [Place Clichy, Night] is a total abstraction”), up to works by Mark Rothko, two of whose paintings have made the journey from the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, and the Fondation Beyeler, near Basel, Switzerland.

In seven rooms, Whistler’s work also dialogues with photography (Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs and Paul Burty-Haviland’s cyanotypes), sculpture (Rodin’s draped muse in homage to Whistler) and the Japanese art that Whistler collected. This rich exhibit sheds light on a painter worth rediscovering and weaves multidisciplinary connections across more than a century of creation.

A friendly café

“Rouen’s cultural community goes to Prélude. The inside is cozy in winter and the patio popular in nice weather. In addition to its carefully selected coffees and healthy, substantial bowls, Prélude has created a poppy cake for the Normandie impressionniste festival in reference to Claude Monet’s Coquelicots (Poppies). Across Normandy, the festival invites visitors to 150 Impressionist-inspired taste experiences in tribute to the movement’s 150^th anniversary.”

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