Highlights: Inspiring Impressionism by Staff from Antiques & Fine Art magazine

Inspiring Impressionism is the first complete survey to explore the influence of Old Master painters on impressionist artists. This pioneering exhibition will display examples of the 17th-century Dutch and Spanish Schools and French Rococo style alongside works by 19th-century French Impressionists. Included in the exhibition are 86 paintings and works on paper by artists such as Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Titian, and Rubens from the collections of over 40 museums, some of which have never traveled to the United States. Inspiring Impressionism will examine the ways in which impressionist artists were informed by their forerunners while creating a new style depicting modern life that came to be known as "Impressionism." Among the impressionist works paired with traditional landscapes, still lifes and portraits by Old Masters are Monet's Summer (1874) and Renoir's Confidences (ca. 1873). Pairings like Mary Cassatt's Mrs. Duffee Seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading (1876) and Jean Honoré Fragonard's Reader (1776) explore connections through use of similar artistic technique, composition, and subject matter. "Inspiring Impressionism asks visitors to rethink preconceived notions about the Impressionist movement and will allow audiences to discover how these artists, like many of their predecessors, imitated earlier art, borrowed particular motifs, and transformed existing compositions and techniques into something completely new," says Michael E. Shapiro, the High's Nancy and Holcombe T. Green Director.