Saying a museum is showing a lot of French art, particularly by the likes of Matisse and Monet, is a bit like saying a doughnut shop is selling a lot of doughnuts. But the Portland Art Museum is in a particularly French mood this summer...
Three supplemental shows hover around Monet to Matisse: French Moderns, a touring show organized by the Brooklyn Museum with a dizzying premise...
As welcoming as fan-favorite Impressionist paintings are, the show's scope is daunting. A timeline near the entrance helps contextualize things, beginning with the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, and ending with the United Nations, founded in 1945...
But if you thread your way selectively through these four shows, you can catch an intimate glimpse of how these larger-than-life figures, Claude Monet chief among them, went from ostracized rejects to some of the most widely recognized names in art history...
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