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THE FOLLOWING EXHIBITION was organized in celebration of the acquisition, through the Munger Fund, of the great painting by Claude Monet, "La Seine a Lavacour", Number 15 in this catalogue, and reproduced herewith.  The formal presentation of this picture will be on Sunday afternoon, November 14th, at 4 P.M.  Members of the Art Association are invited to be present.

It was thought appropriate to exhibit at the same time, paintings by the group of men who were so closely related to Monet, both in his early struggles and throughout his later life.

The Impressionists were a group of French painters who, during the 1860's, were attracted to each other by a common rebellion against the established academic style of painting.  The name was given to them in ridicule, and almost by accident, but it stuck to become an expressive description of their aim.  Three organized exhibitions gave them solidarity, but thereafter the leaders amongst them each went his own way.  Certain theories, connected with the physical properties of light and color in paint, were developed by them, and they preached (as a group) painting actually in the open air rather than in the studio.

The most remarkable thing about Impressionism as a whole, is the fact that it produced half a dozen or so of the greatest painters France has ever had, but that seventy years after it began, their influence has almost completely disappeared.  Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir are amongst the greatest painters of all times; their followers quickly became nothing.

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