Image credit: Camille Pissarro. Detail of Two Peasant Women in a Meadow (Le Pré). 1893. Oil on canvas, 93 x 73.2 cm. Deposited by the Trustees of the White Fund, Lawrence, Massachusetts. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In this final curator tour of Into the Modern: Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, curators Alexis Chen and Celine Ho will share their research on the Impressionist works on display in connection with accompanying archival materials and musical compositions that reflect the modernity of late 19th century France, speaking to the curatorial interventions co-developed by the Gallery and MFA Boston for this iteration of the exhibition in Singapore. Participants will be guided to have a deep encounter with the works of art, and appreciate the immediacy of historical references—photographs, letters, sketches, posters, film and audio recordings—which preserve traces of the society in which the artists lived. The curators will also touch on the Impressionists’ conflicted relationship with the art establishment of their day, and affinities with fellow artists like the Barbizon painters, as well as French composers and photographers whose practices reflect a modernist impulse to embody the spirit of the time.
Highlights on this private tour include Théodore Rousseau’s Pool in the Forest, along with prints of the forest of Fontainebleau by photographers Gustave Le Gray and Eugène Cuvelier; Edgar Degas' At the Races in the Countryside, which was displayed in the Impressionists’ inaugural 1874 exhibition held independently of the state-sponsored Paris Salon, views of which can be seen from reproductions of prints on display; and Camille Pissarro’s Two Peasant Women in a Meadow (Le Pré) in relation to sketches from Turpitudes sociales (Social Disgraces), his album of drawings on inequalities faced by the working class in France. Eugène Louis Boudin’s Fashionable Figures on the Beach will also be discussed alongside advertisements and illustrations of the popular Trouville-sur-Mer seaside destination and Idyll by the composer Emmanuel Chabrier. The tour will culminate in a meditation on the Impressionist aspiration to capture the fleeting moment, as exemplified by Claude Monet’s works such as The Water Lily Pond, alongside excerpts from Sacha Guitry’s 1915 documentary, Ceux de chez nous (Those of Our Land), and Claude Debussy’s Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain).
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When: 7 Feb 2026, 7.30–8.30pm - Suitable For: Adults, Families, Visitors with accessibility needs, Students and Educators
- Where: City Hall Wing, Level 3, Singtel Special Exhibition Gallery 3, Exhibition Entrance (near Lift Lobby B)
- Ticket information: $55 (Standard) and $50 (Concession)
About the Speakers
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