 The
more things change the more they stay the same. Great painting
and sculpture seems to always take a back seat to the artworld
and museum hierarchy. Just over one hundred years ago in 1894 the
Louvre, France's greatest Art Museum made a monumental blunder
by refusing to accept the Caillebotte bequest of dozens of important
and great Impressionist paintings. Upon his untimely death in 1894
at the age of 46, Gustave Caillebotte willed to the Louvre, paintings
on the highest level, by his friends the artists: Edouard Manet,
Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne,
Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Berthe Morisot. To its shame
The Louvre caved in to the power of the Salon, local artworld politics
that brought pressure to bear against the bequest and refused to
accept the paintings, thus depriving itself to this day of the
single greatest collection of Impressionist paintings in the world.
To its credit eventually the Louvre agreed to accept part of the
bequest.
.
. . Ronnie Landfield
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