The Barnes Foundation Presents From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes

Tracing a journey through France, a selection of major paintings from the Barnes collection presented in new contexts and juxtapositions

June 29–August 31, 2025

Philadelphia, PA, March 17, 2025—In summer 2025, the Barnes Foundation will present From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes, an exhibition featuring more than 50 iconic paintings from the first floor of the collection galleries by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and other European artists. Curated by Cindy Kang, this exhibition reflects the expansion of the Barnes’s educational program, emphasizing the historical and cultural context of the works. On view in the Roberts Gallery from June 29 through August 31, 2025, From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal.

Charting a journey through France, this exhibition examines how place informed the work of modern painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition begins in Paris and its suburbs, dynamic places that were at once semi-industrial, as in Van Gogh’s The Factory, and sites of blooming suburban leisure, as in Monet’s Madame Monet Embroidering. Life in and around Paris and the coastal regions of Normandy and Brittany inspired the radical brushwork, light palette, and contemporary subject matter of impressionists like Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, their mentor and friend Édouard Manet, and the post-impressionists. Several of these painters subsequently moved to the South of France, seeking the warmer climate and dazzling sunlight that intensified their colors.

From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes highlights Van Gogh’s time in Arles and Saint-Rémy—uniting, for the first time, several Van Gogh paintings from the Barnes collection on one wall—as well as Cézanne’s deep connection to his native Provence, with nearly 20 works depicting scenes from the countryside and his family home, the Jas de Bouffan. Finally, the exhibition returns to Paris to explore a new generation of painters who flocked there from across Europe—Amedeo Modigliani, Chaïm Soutine, Giorgio de Chirico, and Joan Miró—and reaffirmed the French capital’s place as the center of modern art.

Creating space for new conversations between works—a critical aspect of education, research, and public access—this exhibition will provide visitors a rare opportunity to temporarily experience these paintings in new contexts and juxtapositions. While this exhibition is on view, rooms 2 through 13 of the Barnes collection will be closed for a floor refinishing project. Following the exhibition, the paintings will return to their original locations in the galleries.

“Featuring a wide variety of works from the first-floor galleries, this exhibition emphasizes the historical and cultural context of the paintings and offers the extraordinary opportunity for visitors to encounter beloved French paintings from the Barnes collection in new conversations,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President.

“By seeing these works juxtaposed for the first time, visitors will discover how particular places—with their distinct landscapes, light, and people—shaped the work of each artist,” says Cindy Kang. “I hope this exhibition will inspire audiences to see these well-known paintings in a new light and with a renewed sense of appreciation and level of understanding.”

The exhibition will feature more than 50 major paintings from the first floor of the Barnes collection. Highlights include:

• Édouard Manet, Laundry (1875): In this canvas, a woman washes linen in a flower-filled garden in Paris. A child to her right, as if eager to help, tugs at the pail of suds. Washerwomen were popular figures in 19th-century art and literature. Manet’s good friend Émile Zola, for example, described their tough lives in his novels. But this depiction is idyllic. Flashes of white paint—offset by grays and blues—become sunlight on the drying fabric. After the jury of the French Salon, the annual state art exhibition, rejected this painting, Manet exhibited it independently.
  
• Claude Monet, The Studio Boat (1876): The figure in the boat is likely the artist, who outfitted this floating studio with all his supplies so that he could paint from the middle of the Seine River. Boating culture in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris, inspired him to have this vessel constructed to his specifications. Often Monet would anchor his boat when working. But sometimes he painted as he drifted down the river, creating landscapes that are more a collection of momentary glimpses rather than a depiction of one specific spot.
• Vincent van Gogh, The Postman (Joseph Étienne-Roulin) (1889): Van Gogh probably met Joseph Étienne-Roulin, a postman at the Arles train station in the South of France, when the artist rented a room above the nearby Café de la Gare. The two shared similar left-leaning political views and became close friends; in fact, it was Roulin who cared for Van Gogh during his hospital stay in nearby Saint-Rémy. Van Gogh painted six portraits of Roulin between 1888 and 1889 as well as several of Roulin’s wife and children.
• Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire (1892–95): Mont Sainte-Victoire, which towers over the Aix-en-Provence region of southern France, was one of Cézanne’s favorite motifs. He spent his childhood exploring its terrain, and he painted it several dozen times from different vantage points. The mountain also held symbolic meaning to the artist, representing the ancient countryside during a moment of rapid industrialization and modernization. On the right side of the canvas, one can just make out an ancient Roman aqueduct.
  
• Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait of the Red-Headed Woman (1918): Modigliani’s portrait of a woman who was part of his international, bohemian circles in Paris suggests how women’s lives had changed by the early 20th century. With her vivid hair and strapless dress, she drapes her shoulder over the chair and addresses the viewer with an unapologetic gaze. Her revealing dress shows how bold new fashions could represent a form of freedom. Modigliani used a thick round brush to describe the model’s flesh, and the textured surface seems to invite touch.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Cindy Kang, PhD, is curator at the Barnes. She is a specialist in modern European art and particularly focuses on the relationship between painting and decorative arts in late 19th- and early 20th-century France. At the Barnes, she co-curated Matisse & Renoir: New Encounters at the Barnes (2024) and Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris (2023–24); curated Marie Cuttoli: The Modern Thread from Miró to Man Ray (2020); and served as managing curator for Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist (2018–19) and Renoir: Father and Son / Painting and Cinema (2018). Additionally, she commissioned the exhibition Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community (2022) and co-led the institution’s land acknowledgment process. Kang previously held curatorial and research positions at the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Bard Graduate Center, and was a scholar-in-residence at the Getty Research Institute. She received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION
From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes is organized by the Barnes and curated by Cindy Kang.

SPONSORS
From Paris to Provence: French Painting at the Barnes is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal.

Additional support is provided by the Barnes Docents, Dr. Robert C. Cody, Linda Frankel, Mary Jo Grdina and Walter A. Brogan, Jennifer C. McNeil, and other generous individuals.

Ongoing funding for exhibitions comes from the Christine and Michael Angelakis Exhibition Fund, the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund, the Lois and Julian Brodsky Exhibition Fund, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Christine and George Henisee Exhibition Fund, the Aileen and Brian Roberts Exhibition Fund, and the Tom and Margaret Lehr Whitford Exhibition Fund.

In addition, funding for all exhibitions comes from contributors to the Barnes Foundation Exhibition Fund:

Joan Carter and John Aglialoro, Julia and David Fleischner, Victoria McNeil Le Vine, Leigh and John Middleton, Jeanette and Joe Neubauer

John Alchin and Hal Marryatt, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, Lois and Julian Brodsky, N. Judith Broudy, Elaine W. Camarda and A. Morris Williams, Jr., Marianne N. Dean, Eugene and Michelle Dubay, Penelope P. Harris, Jones & Wajahat Family, Lisa D. Kabnick and John H. McFadden, Victor F. Keen and Jeanne Ruddy, Marguerite Lenfest, Maribeth and Steven Lerner, Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation, Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan, Cathy and Henry Nassau, The Park Family, Wendy and Mark Rayfield, Anne and Bruce Robinson, Adele K. Schaeffer, Katie and Tony Schaeffer, Donna and Jerry Slipakoff, Dr. and Mrs. Eugene E. Stark, Joan F. Thalheimer, Bruce and Robbi Toll, van Beuren Charitable Foundation, Kirsten White, and Randi Zemsky and Bob Lane.

ABOUT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
The Barnes Foundation is a nonprofit cultural and educational institution that shares its unparalleled art collection with the public, organizes special exhibitions, and presents programming that fosters new ways of thinking about human creativity. The Barnes collection is displayed in ensembles that integrate art and objects from across cultures and time periods, overturning traditional hierarchies and revealing universal elements of human expression. Home to one of the world’s finest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern paintings—including the largest groups of paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne in existence—the Barnes brings together renowned canvases by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Vincent van Gogh, alongside African, Asian, ancient, medieval, and Native American art as well as metalwork, furniture, and decorative art.

The Barnes was established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.” A visionary collector and pioneering educator, Dr. Barnes was also a fierce advocate for the civil rights of African Americans, women, and the economically marginalized. Committed to racial equality and social justice, he established a scholarship program to support young Black artists, writers, and musicians who wanted to further their education. Dr. Barnes became actively involved in the Harlem Renaissance, during which he collaborated with philosopher Alain Locke and Charles S. Johnson, the scholar and activist, to promote awareness of the artistic value of African art. Today, the 15-member Barnes Board of Trustees includes five trustees elected upon the nomination of Lincoln University, the nation’s first degree-granting HBCU, continuing a relationship that began during Dr. Barnes’s lifetime.

Since moving to Philadelphia in 2012, the Barnes has expanded its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and social justice, teaching visual literacy in groundbreaking ways; investing in original scholarship relating to its collection; and enhancing accessibility throughout every facet of its programs.

The Barnes Foundation is situated in Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people. Read our Land Acknowledgment.

Hours and ticket prices are listed on our website.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION
Deirdre Maher, Director of Communications
215.278.7160, press@barnesfoundation.org
Online press office: barnesfoundation.org/press