Museum Folkwang Centenary Show Unites Osthaus and Matsukata Collections

For its 100th anniversary, the Museum Folkwang in Essen presents a landmark exhibition titled "Renoir, Monet, Gauguin — Images of a Floating World," running until May 15, 2022. The show brings together around 120 masterpieces from the collections of German patron Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921) and Japanese shipping magnate Kōjirō Matsukata (1866–1950). For the first time since the 1950s, the Matsukata collection of Impressionist works from the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo is fully exhibited in Europe. The exhibition also marks the first time that major acquisitions by both collectors are shown together, including Renoir's "Liza with an Umbrella" (Osthaus) and Manet's "Portrait of Monsieur Brun" (Matsukata). Works by Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Monet, and Rodin are also featured, highlighting how modern French art was embraced by collectors in both the West and Japan.