Le Havre as Cradle of Impressionism: MuMa Collection at Singer Laren

The exhibition 'Meesterwerken uit Le Havre' at Singer Laren presents the Norman port city as a birthplace of Impressionism, drawing on the collection of MuMa Le Havre. During the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune (1870-71), artists like Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and dealer Paul Durand-Ruel fled via Le Havre to London. Monet's 1872 painting 'Impression, soleil levant', made from his hotel window overlooking the harbor, gave the movement its name. The show features some seventy works, including loans of female artists Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot from private collections, addressing MuMa's lack of women. Highlights include Eugène Boudin's cloud studies and Johan Barthold Jongkind's harbor views, which influenced Monet. Works by Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, Matisse, Vuillard, and Bonnard are included, though the final room dedicated to local hero Raoul Dufy is deemed anticlimactic. The exhibition runs at Singer Laren.