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Montreal Exhibit
MESSAGE:
Traveled to Montreal last week to see the Waterhouse exhibit...it was AMAZING! I never thought I would get the chance to see all of these great paintings of my FAVORITE artist in one place in my lifetime. It truly was one of the best days of my life. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has a giant banner of "The Lady of Shallot" hanging on the front of the building and Waterhouse kiosks throughout the city.
The exhibit was beautifully displayed. I spent 4+ hours looking at the exhibit and absorbing every square inch of each painting. It was awesome to get a chance to see his technique up close. The most impressive thing about his style of painting is how painterly his brushstrokes are. Yet when you step back a few feet from the painting, each masterfully painted stroke blends together to create a smooth looking image. The colors were so vibrant, something that gets lost in reproductions. It was cool to see his sketches too.
Favorites from the exhibit Circe Invidiosa (my favorite painting), Saint Cecilia & Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus.
The only negative about the Waterhouse exhibit is the exhibit catalog. The reproductions were awful. The colors are too dark and muddy. Instead of wasting $50 on the catalog, I bought the book "JW Waterhouse" by Peter Trippi which has very nice reproductions.
Hope everyone gets a chance to see this amazing exhibit.
RESPONSES:
Thanks so much for sharing this!
(here's a photo from
Flickr showing the museum entrance)
Bella Donna- I was there 2 weeks ago and had a great time too. Our visits sound similar.
I agree, the reproductions, from the postcards, to posters, to the catalog, are all pretty awful. Trippi's book has larger, and clearer images, though there are a few which suffer in his book as well. I know it can be a daunting task for large museums to create up-to-date digital files of their collections, but when an exhibit like this is mounted, I wish the paintings could all be newly shot, rather than forcing 30 year-old+ bad images on the publishers and on the public.
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