Exclusive international works arrive for exhibition in Ballarat

The Art Gallery of Ballarat is celebrating the success of their Eugene von Guerard exhibition by securing an exclusive international exhibition from the Musée de la Chartreuse.

The regional art museum situated in Douai in the Flanders region of northern France will loan 60 works for the Into Light exhibition that tells the story of French painting from classical to post impressionism in the nineteenth century.

Exhibition curator Julie McLaren said the Douai collection provides the perfect backdrop to highlight the Ballarat gallery’s extraordinary collection of works by European and Australian artists.

“Prominent among the works on display will be a rarely seen treasure of the Ballarat collection, Paul Signac’s 1923 watercolour, Fishing boats at Lomalo,” McLaren said. “The visiting international works will be complemented by a selection of key works from an Australian collection by European and Australian artists such as E Phillips Fox, Ethel Carrick Fox, David Davies and Hilda Rix Nicholas from the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Bendigo Art Gallery.

“As the title suggests, light is the central theme of our exhibition. Capturing light on canvas has entranced, eluded and obsessed countless artists, most famously perhaps by the Impressionists who sought to document the fleeting and transient effect of sunlight through short brushstrokes of pure colour.”

Into Light shows how the impact of these changes was felt as far afield as Australia, where artists started imitating their French counterparts and took to painting en plein air (outside).

In the mid-nineteenth century, France was the acknowledged centre of the art world, as realist styles of painting were challenged by Impressionism; with the advent of photography many artists worked to imitate nature, finding new ways to celebrate light and colour as spontaneous ‘impressions’.

“The nineteenth-century wealth which the coal industry brought to Douai enabled the Musée de la Chartreuse to build an impressive collection, including French paintings from the eighteenth through to the twentieth century,” McLaren said.

“For both Douai and Ballarat, nineteenth century industry brought wealth, and investment in cultural institutions, so the collections are worth comparing.”

The exhibition will be accompanied by special guided tours at 12pm every Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during the run of the exhibition.

Into Light opens June 23 until September 9 at the Art Gallery of Ballarat located at 40 Lydiard Street, North Ballarat.

The gallery is open from 10am until 5pm daily with adults $16, concession $12, student $10 and children 16 and under free.

For more information, visit artgalleryofballarat.com.au.