Objective

Dates:
June 20 – September 3, 2012

Overview
Arcadia has long been a popular subject in theater, poetry and art and during the early 1900s in France, this mystical, earthly paradise was illustrated in mural-sized paintings. Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia at the Philadelphia Museum of Art explores three of these paintings, placed on view together: Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1898), Paul Cézanne’s The Large Bathers (1906), and Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River (1909-17).

Visions of Arcadia examines the different, yet closely related and complementary meanings of these three paintings, each a landmark in the history of modern art. Featuring more than 40 works by 23 artists drawn from public and private collections in this country and abroad, the exhibition also explores more broadly the appeal that the Arcadia had for artists in the 19th century.

The exhibition, which is only being shown in Philadelphia, also includes masterpieces by Albert Gleizes, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Signac that emphasize the French tradition of grand public paintings and works by Nicolas Poussin and others establish the prevalence of the Arcadian theme.