Two major Impressionist acquisitions for Liverpool

20/1/24 - Acquisitions - Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery - In addition to a very fine drawing by Rembrandt (see the news item of 18/1/24), the publication of Arts Council England’s annual report on works acquired by British museums through the Acceptance in Lieu or Cultural Gifts Scheme reveals other important additions, foremost among them a painting by Monet (ill. 1) and a pastel by Degas (ill. 2). Both came from the same private collection and were donated to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. They add two major works to the museum’s Impressionist collection, part of which is on display in Room 10. Monet’s only surviving work was a single canvas acquired in 1962 with the help of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, a view of the frozen Seine dated 1893. Degas, for his part, was already represented by two works on display in the permanent exhibition: a late canvas from the Women Ironing series and the sculpture of the Masseuse (ill. 3), from the Lucian Freud collection and donated in 2013. Like the newly-acquired Modist Trimming a Hat, both date from the 1890s.

1. Claude Monet (1840-1926)
The Epte at Giverny, 1884
Oil on canvas - 60.5 x 73.5cm
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery
Photo: Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery

See the image in its page

Signed and dated 1884, The Epte at Giverny - which came up for sale at Christie’s in New York in November 2010 - is among Monet’s earliest Giverny landscapes, executed the year after he moved to the right bank of the Seine. A tributary of the Seine, the Epte, which flows through Giverny, inspired a large number of his compositions, including the twenty or so paintings in the Poplars series, undertaken immediately after the Haystacks and immediately before the Cathedrals, during the spring, summer and autumn of 1891, and those in the Morning on the Seine series, undertaken during the summers of 1896 and 1897. As with most of the latter, the painting that joins Liverpool was probably painted from a boat. In a tight…