Exhibition note.

Russell, John (English Bishop)

"Right under the Sun: Landscape in Provence, from Classicism to Modernism (1750-1920)" Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. September 22, 2005-January 8, 2006

This show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has an irresistible subject. At the very name of Provence, almost everyone by now breaks into smiles. Vincent van Gogh spoke for all of them when he said to Berthe Morisot that Provence was "the most beautiful country in the world. It is as if you had Italy and Greece and the country round Paris combined and put together."

It had long been so. Already in the early fourteenth century, when the poet Petrarch had professional duties at the Papal court in Avignon, he said, "Here I have my Rome, my Athens, my homeland." Today, Provence musters Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Degas, and Cezanne as its key figures, with Andre Derain, Raoul Dufy, and Georges Braque as their successors. (Derain lived till 1953, Dufy till 1954, and Braque till 1963).

There was also an American painter, born and raised in England, named Thomas Cole (1801-1848). His "Fountain of Vaucluse" (1841) takes rank in the show as the epitome of a certain Provence.

Both the status of Provence and its ambitions are defined briefly but aptly in its subtitle "From Classicism to Modernism." As early as 1850, people were talking about the "School of Marseilles." The poet Theophile Gautier said of the people of Marseilles that "they really are possessed. The sun beats up their brains and fills them with a feeling for color."

In 1876, when Cezanne had just began to settle in Provence, he wrote to Pissarro from L'Estaque: "The sun here is so tremendous that it is as if the objects were silhouetted not only in black and white but in blue, red, brown and violet."

In 1906 the harsh light and the color--which flared up at times "like sticks of dynamite"--were already notorious. After World War II there was a huge and enthusiastic public, worldwide, that thought of Provence in terms primarily of Impressionism. But this was always a mistake.

And then, in 1991, the museum in nearby Toulon had an exhibition called "Painting in Provence before Impressionism" that made perfect sense. More recently, the status of Provence has been further strengthened by the fact that Cezanne was a nonpareil who simply has no rival among the major painters of his day (or, in some ways, of any other day).

It was under the sun of Provence that things could be said and done in painting that had never been said or done before. Cezanne for instance felt free to say that his object in Provence was not to show how a place looked in reality, but how it should look in a picture. When, for instance, he painted "Rocks in a Forest" in the 1890s, he did not simply make a list of them. He plotted exactly where and how a gifted climber could get to the top.

The current show is strong in landscapes that relate to its title in a measured, unhurrying, and civilized way. Cezanne, Dufy, and Derain are strongly represented, and there are in all ten local studies by Francois-Marius Granet, after whom the museum in Aix-en-Provence is named. Visitors will also find the indispensable painting by Maurice Denis in which Cezanne, with paints and canvas at the ready, looks across to the Montagne Sainte Victoire.

There are also some notable surprises. Anyone who thinks that Renoir is in general undemanding and does all the work for us should look at his "Rocky Crags at L'Estaque." The crags in question are steep, deeply indented by nature, and notably forbidding.

Renoir lets us know that we would never get above ground level, and that very few of us would even try. Yet that rockscape has a wild and turbulent poetry, and in our own armchair we can daydream about those crags and come back safe.

This memorable show was edited by Guy Cogeval, director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Marie-Paule Vial, director of the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Marseilles. Both contributed articles to the catalogue in which their enthusiasm is both evident and infectious.