NOVEL: Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet & TOUR: National Gallery of Art (D.C.)
Details
Let's go to Washington, D.C. for the day! Join Mimi at the National Gallery of the Art for a Novel-Tourists-only guided tour of the Gallery and then immerse ourselves in the dynamic Parisian art scene of 1874 by viewing the only American stop for an historic exhibition of Impressionist artists! Before the tour, we’ll have a Taste of Paris lunch in the Gallery and discuss the paired book, Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet by Stephanie Cowell.
TRANSPORTATION:
If you are rsvpin'g or added to the going list after 11/18/24 you must buy your own train ticket. From Philly we are going to be on the below train. If you choose not to take this train or want to arrive via a different method, you must let us know so we aren't herding cats. :)
Amtrak 183 - 9:00am depart Philly - 11:01am arrive DC
6:35pm - 8:31pm Phl
Amtrak 138 - 6:35pm depart DC - 8:31pm arrive Philly
The Gallery and tour are free and food, etc. is on your own.
OVERALL ITINERARY:
- 8:40am - meet at 30th Street Station
Take Amtrak 183 - 9:00am depart Philly - 11:01am arrive DC
- 11:30ish arrive at National Gallery of the ARt
Lunch and book discussion at Garden Cafe or Cascade Cafe for Taste of Paris
- 1:30 pm - 2:30pm Tentatively planned Tour (we need 15 participants in order to book a tour)
- 2:30-4pm explore the Gallery on your own
- 4:30pm-6pm Dinner at TBD
- 6pm walk to Union Station
- 6:35pm Train back to Philly
on Amtrak 138 - 6:35pm depart DC - 8:31pm arrive Philly
EXHIBIT AND TENTATIVE TOUR:
How did impressionism begin? Discover the origins of the French art movement in a new look at the radical 1874 exhibition considered the birth of modern painting.
A remarkable presentation of 130 works includes a rare reunion of many of the paintings first featured in that now-legendary exhibition. Revisit beloved paintings by Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Camille Pissarro and meet their lesser-known contemporaries. See the art norms they were rebelling against and learn what political and social shifts sparked their new approach to art.
On this tour of the permanent section of the National Gallery of Art’s collection, discover the ways 19th-century French artists broke with tradition and transformed French art. Together we will look closely and explore how artists such as Monet, Cézanne, and Cassatt challenged the art establishment through their subject matter and techniques. This tour does not go into the Exhibition. It is of the permanent collection.
THE NOVEL: Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet by Stephanie Cowell
Genre: Historical Fiction
A vividly-rendered portrait of both the rise of Impressionism and of the artist at the center of the movement, Claude and Camille is above all a love story of the highest romantic order.
In the mid-nineteenth century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his father’s nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his father’s will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.
But once there he is confronted with obstacles: an art world that refused to validate his style, extreme poverty, and a war that led him away from his home and friends. But there were bright spots as well: his deep, enduring friendships with men named Renoir, Cézanne, Pissarro, Manet—a group that together would come to be known as the Impressionists, and that supported each other through the difficult years. Even more illuminating was his lifelong love, Camille Doncieux, a beautiful, upper-class Parisian girl who threw away her privileged life to be by the side of the defiant painter and embrace the lively Bohemian life of their time.
His muse, his best friend, his passionate lover, and the mother to his two children, Camille stayed with Monet—and believed in his work—even as they lived in wretched rooms and often suffered the indignities of destitution. But Camille had her own demons—secrets that Monet could never penetrate—including one that when eventually revealed would pain him so deeply that he would never fully recover from its impact.
BONUS BOOK: The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism
Genre: Nonfiction
If you want to learn more about this era of art, this is the book for you!
With a novelist's skill and the insight of an historian, bestselling author Ross King recalls a seminal period when Paris was the artistic center of the world, and the rivalry between Meissonier and Manet.
While the Civil War raged in America, another revolution took shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas and against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, would at times resemble a battlefield; and as Ross King reveals, it would reorder both history and culture, and resonate around the world.
See you at the Gallery!
Housekeeping!
- Here are the Club’s Basic Rules and Liability Release. You should read them because by signing up for an event you agree to them! 🙂
- Some links above are affiliate links which means when you use them to buy your book they help support the club at no cost to you!
~ Audrey
NOVEL: Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet & TOUR: National Gallery of Art (D.C.)