The processing of external impulses, something that remains central, Impressionism’s enduring need for a visual reality, the innovative regard for developments in France coupled with the prerequisite of highly developed national en plein air painting traditions and the presence of a considerable number and quality of emerging painters, gave rise to a flourishing of Impressionism and independent Impressionist schools in Russia and in America.

The exhibition is divided into various sections highlighting the interest of the Impressionist movement in specific subjects and phenomena such as the polarities of urban and rural, nature and civilisation, movement and stasis, noise and silence, light and darkness. Around 50 principal works of Russian Impressionism are paired with a similar number of pictures from American artists all spanning the period from the 1880s through to the first decades of the twentieth century. American artists on show include Theodore Robinson, Julian Alden Weir, John Twachtman, Willard L. Metcalf, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam and Mary Cassatt. The Russians in the show are Ilya Repin, Abraham Archipov, Wassily Polenov, Isaak Levitan, Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov. A small group of selected French pictures forms the core of the exhibition. They represent the central role of France both in the development of Impressionism and as an educational Mecca for Russian and American painters. This section focuses on the paintings and figure of Claude Monet along with Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.

The show is exclusive to the Bank Austria Kunstforum and a comprehensive publication as well as a program of special events will accompany the project. The exhibition will give people in Austria and the heart of Europe the opportunity for the first time to see previously lesser-known paintings and appreciate the outstanding work of the American and Russian Impressionists in the company of their more familiar French brethren.