Museum's new art pays 'homage' to French founder

A County Durham museum is paying "homage" to its French founder's routes by bringing in works she would have approved of for its newest exhibition.

The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has linked up with a museum in Le Havre for Impressions of Light, featuring a number of impressionist paintings never before been seen in the UK.

The display also highlights the links between the museum's founders, John Bowes and his Parisian wife Josephine, and the French art world.

The museum said the exhibition, which will run until 14 March, involved a detailed planning operation to secure all necessary permissions and logistical arrangements, with specialist art couriers transporting the works.

The exhibition brings together 60 works from Bowes' collection and the Musée d'Art Moderne André Malraux (MuMa), in Le Havre.

Bowes Museum's executive director Hannah Fox said: "It doesn't simply create a dialogue between our two museums, it restores a connection between two worlds.

"While the paintings were made in Normandy, many of the landscapes they depict find unexpected echoes in County Durham."

Fox said the exhibition paid "homage" to Josephine Bowes and her "mold-breaking artistic patronage", uniting the works she collected with "avant-garde" pieces she might have acquired had she lived beyond 1874.

Michaël Debris, assistant curator at MuMa, said: "The collaboration between our two museums has its roots in a longer history."

One of the artworks, Fécamp, Seaside by Claude Monet, is going on display 22 years after the Bowes Museum first requested it.

"As the painting was involved in another project at the time it could not be loaned then, but now it has finally happened," Debris said.

Organisers have spent two and half years planning the exhibition, from discussing its "concept and narrative" through to selecting and securing artworks.

Getting all necessary permissions and logistical arrangements for transportation took just under a year.

Vicky Sturrs, director of programmes and collections at the Bowes Museum, said: "For international loans, artworks are carefully inspected and packed in specialist crates, then transported with specialist art couriers.

"Customs and import requirements are managed alongside detailed documentation, including condition reports and insurance.

"When the artworks arrive, they are carefully unpacked and condition checked again to identify any impact from their journey before they are installed in the gallery space."

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