Musée d’Art de Toulon (MAT)

De Delacroix à Signac: L’aquarelle dans tous ses éclats

From June 15 to October 6, 2024

Curated by Brigitte Gaillard

Precious, delicate and fragile, watercolor has often been perceived as a secondary technique, unable to rival the evocative power of oil painting. On the contrary, the Musée d’Art de Toulon’s summer exhibition, De Delacroix à Signac, l’aquarelle dans tous ses éclats (From Delacroix to Signac, watercolor in all its glory), seeks to reveal its importance in the history of art from the 19th to the early 20th century.

 

The recent spotlight on watercolor, through dedicated exhibitions and books, has highlighted its unique qualities, which have accompanied the pictorial evolutions of the century. Following in the footsteps of major artists, the exhibition seeks to retrace the mutations and artistic friendships that predestined its advent.

Along a chronological path, punctuated by an intimate scenography highlighting the reduced format of the works, visitors can appreciate the evolution of the use of watercolor. Initially reserved for the private sphere of the studio, as a means of study or a subject of fantasy, this singular artistic technique earned its letters of nobility and became a genre in its own right, as worthy of being practiced as oil painting.

 

Although watercolors began to spread in England in the 18th century, they first took off in France on the banks of the Seine, thanks to the discovery of English watercolorists (Bonington) by Romantic painters (Delacroix, Huet). Later, it was in Normandy that it found its full expression, notably due to its ease of transport (Isabey, Boudin, Jongkind). The Southern schools exploited its color and light potential (Ziem, Nardi, Courdouan, Mossa), while the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Picasso, Cross, Signac) saw it as a means of experimenting with the division of the brushstroke and the expression of light.

 

With the exceptional support of the Musée d’Orsay, and featuring a selection of almost one hundred works from leading collections in Paris (Cabinet d’Arts Graphiques of the Musée du Louvre, Fondation Custodia, Petit Palais, Musée Eugène Delacroix, etc.) and in the region (Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, Musée Ziem in Martigues, Musée de l’Annonciade in Saint-Tropez, etc.), as well as from galleries and private collectors, the exhibition reveals the many facets of watercolour painting.

The intrinsic sensitivity of this technique means that his works are rarely shown, for conservation reasons. The exhibition De Delacroix à Signac, l’aquarelle dans tous ses éclats (From Delacroix to Signac, watercolor in all its splendor) is all the more essential as it presents previously unseen works, exceptionally brought together.

 

https://toulon.fr/envie-bouger/article/musee-d-art-de-toulon-mat

 

Your VIP card (valid for two people) entitles you to free admission to the MAT from August 29 to September 1 inclusive. Please check the opening times and dates on the website.

 

Informations

 

Address: 113 boulevard du général Leclarc, 83000 Toulon