As far as the eye can see

Simultaneously and further to the Paula Modersohn-Becker exhibition, Villa Vauban is showing a selection of over sixty 19th- to 21st-century European landscape paintings from its own as well as from international collections.

In the course of the 19th century and through to its end, painters’ outlook on nature went through significant changes. Distancing themselves from past academic norms, they gave rise to new forms of landscape expression.

Artists’ colonies, the most important of which was the French Barbizon School, founded in 1830, played a fundamental role in bringing about these changes. Living together on-site, painters favoured working outdoors. Through the works of Jean-Baptiste Corot (1796–1875) and Auguste Anastasi (1820–1889), the exhibition commemorates two members of this school. Jules Dupré (1811–1889) represents another art colony situated near Crozant. A seascape by Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), one of the founders of French realism, illustrates another facet of the representation of nature. Dutch and Belgian art colonies also developed a style of their own that can be perceived in the exhibition through the works of Leonardus de Haas (1832–1908) and Gustave Victor Speeckaert (1843–1887).
Three landscape paintings characteristic of Otto Modersohn (1865–1943) who, with Fritz Mackensen (1866–1953) founded in 1889 the Worpswede art colony in Germany, link up with the works of Paula Modersohn-Becker. Frantz Seimetz, a great traveller, worked sporadically alongside artists in colonies that included those of Rügen and Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea where he painted numerous scenes of coastal and island landscapes.
Among the painters of Luxembourg landscapes from the 1920s up to the 1950s, feature Jean Schaack (1895–1959), Jean Noerdinger (1895–1963) and Michel Breithoff (1923–1996). Their works vary in style from impressionism through to expressionism with a preference for village scenes, urban spaces, forests and rivers. Painters such as Nico Klopp (1894–1930) eagerly sought inspiration abroad.

The exhibition concludes with landscape paintings by 20th- and 21st-century Luxembourg artists whose styles include late impressionism through to photorealism and abstraction using oil, watercolour and graphic techniques.