The Corcoran Gallery: Turner to Cezanne

I just got back from the sneak preview of the "Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection" exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery (http://www.corcoran.org/).  I am loving the benefits of Corcoran Membership...exhibit preview, getting to wander the Salon Dore and the rest of the permanent collection ALONE, and lemon squares (at least for tonight).

The exhibit displays 53 pieces from the collection of Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, Welsh sisters who collected based on their personal taste not just the styles of the time.  As a result, they amassed a collection of some of the best known realist, impressionist and post-impressionist artists in the late 19th and early 20th century.  The exhibit features works from the National Museum Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru...you have to love Welsh) many of which have never been seen in the U.S.  

Among my favorites: a strikingly violent painting of a tree uprooted in a storm by Millet, a hushed study of St. Mark's in Venice in deep midnight blue by Whistler, one of Monet's water lilies, and a Cezanne landscape with Mont Saint-Victoire in the background.  What stopped me in my tracks was Rain-Auvers by Van Gogh.  I knew that Van Gogh died young, but didn't remember that he was only 37 when he killed himself.  To think that someone in that much pain could create something so beautiful two weeks before he died makes my heart ache.  If only he could have felt how much his paintings would impact other people more than a century later.  Check it out on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/museumwales/2764545783/