Gems of Impressionism

The exhibition Gems of Impressionism. Paintings from the National Gallery of Art in Washington was born from the collaboration of two great institutions, Roma Capitale - Department of Culture, Creativity and Artistic Promotion, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Towards the end of the 19220s, the American banker, businessman, industrialist,  Andrew W. Mellon, started what would become one of the most important art collections in the world, with the ambition to embrace the best of European art from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. After his death in 1937, his offspring (Paul and Ailsa) carried on his legacy, cultivating the same passion of his father, enriching what is now known as the Mellon Collection, which is kept as a result of a donation, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

French artists in general and the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in particular, have always had a great importance in the Mellon collection, not surprisingly it includes some of the most precious masterpieces of the period. The New exhibition space Ara Pacis will host artworks by arists such as Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Boudin, Pissarro, Bonnard, Toulose-Lautrec, Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Seurat.

The exhibition proposes a focus on the works of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection. A unique exhibition of its kind, and made possible thanks to the loan of 68 artworks, with the intent to present not just an exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, but one that aims to present a different and exclusive point of view, that of a private art collection, with works purchased according to the personal and intimate taste of the collector, but with the communicative power that only the great masterpieces possess.