Monet. Renoir. Sargent.

Pissarro. Courbet. Hassam. Sisley. Inness.

The Impressionism movement doesn’t lack for artists whom we now would consider something akin to celebrities, and those names come one after the other in a new exhibition of 40 oil paintings at the Portland Museum of Art.

Portland is the final stop for the touring show “Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism,” which has appeared in Sarasota, Fla., Raleigh, N.C., Richmond, Va., and Denver.

Tom Denenberg, the PMA’s chief curator and acting director, said he wanted to bring the show to Portland as a sort of juxtaposition to the museum’s previous show featuring photographer Georgia O’Keeffe, who became a celebrity in her day, and next winter’s planned exhibition of rock-and-roll photographs of Elvis Presley, Madonna, Jimi Hendrix and others.

Indeed, the current exhibition’s large paintings of traditional landscapes, seascapes and scenes of peasant life hang on stately red walls, like a show of Old Masters’ works – much different from celebrity photographs.

“It heightens the contrast, if you do a landscape show on red walls,” Denenberg said. “The paintings pop against the red. It kind of flips people around a little bit, and just makes the museum active and dynamic, and responsive to different constituencies’ interests.”

Yet, an exhibition of works by artists such as Monet and Renoir is almost a continuation of the celebrity theme. In their day, some of the artists were well-known because of their participation in the Salon de Refuses, which was held in Paris in 1883 after the official Salon rejected some of the Impressionists’ works.

Those two artists, among others in the Portland show, have become household names, and their work has remained popular in the form of everyday objects such as posters and notecards.

“It was radical, the Salon de Refuses, for artists who weren’t accepted by the establishment,” Denenberg said. “For them to become [famous now], it’s ironic.”

It’s easy to see why the Impressionists remain so beloved.

In these works, there’s no such thing as a rainy day. The skies are penetratingly blue. The flowers are a bright riot of color. The forests and fields are deeply, profoundly green.

Denenberg said he organized the show in a way to emphasize the greens and gardens that came out of the early Impressionism tradition of plein-air painting, in which artists of the Barbizon School of French landscape would paint on-site preparatory sketches that were carried out as larger works in the studio.

“In terms of physically laying it out,” he said, “I mostly put the marquee landscape paintings [in the middle gallery], to formally make a green space, like a forest garden.”

Denenberg also paid attention to chronology as well as subject matter. The show opens with earlier works such as Charles-Francois Daubigny’s “The River Seine at Mantes” from 1856, and George Inness’ “June 1882,” which both depict river scenes.

Gustave Courbet’s “Isolated Rock” from 1862 and the washed-out pastel colors of Monet’s “Vernon, Soleil” from 1894 are in a group of early seascapes which appear at the beginning of the show. There is also a wall of bright flowers, including Frederick Childe Hassam’s “Poppies on the Isles of Shoales” from 1890.

After Denenberg’s room of greenery, things turn toward the modern. It’s a group that includes one of the show’s premier works, Renoir’s “Les Vignes a Cagnes (The Vineyards at Cagnes)” from 1908, with its visible brush strokes and warm Mediterranean colors which were rare for Renoir.

The exhibition wraps up with works by American artists of the early 20th century who for the most part chose more modern subjects and were influenced by their European predecessors. Ashcan School painter William Glackens’ “Children Rollerskating,” circa 1912-14, is a riot of color and brush strokes in an attempt to capture movement, set in what seems to be an urban park scene.

Robert Spencer’s 1913 work “White Tenement,” which also shows off visible brush strokes to illustrate the crowded backyard of a tenement building, is a wholly different subject matter from the pastoral scenes of works of the previous century.

Modernism seems to be the subject of Charles Courtney Curran’s “On the Heights,” from 1909. Three young women in modern dress of the era are seated in profile against a blue sky, looking at something unseen that must be in front of them.

“It’s that moment, the early 20th century,” Denenberg said. “It’s a young, modern nation looking off into the future. Then, of course, we know [World War I starts]. But it’s the rise of modernism.”

“Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism” closes Jan. 4, 2009. For more information, go to www.portlandmuseum.org or call 775-6148.

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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