The Bloch Galleries

In June 2015, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art welcomed into its collection 29 masterworks by the leading Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists of the 19th century — among them Pierre Bonnard, Eugène Boudin, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Alfred Sisley and Vincent van Gogh. Lovingly collected over more than 20 years, these extraordinary works of art reflect the passion and vision of Marion and Henry Bloch.

The Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation provided funding for the transformation of more than half of the museum’s galleries of European art. Within this beautiful suite of galleries, paintings from the Bloch Collection join the museum’s rich collection of 19th- and early-20th century European paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, pastels, prints and drawings.

Exhibition overview from museum website

Image: Vincent van Gogh, Dutch (1853-1890). Restaurant Rispal at Asnières, 1887. Oil on canvas, 28 7/8 x 23 5/8 inches. Gift of Henry W. and Marion H. Bloch, 2015.13.10.

Whether you go or not, Manet to Matisse Impressionist Masters from the Marion and Henry Bloch Collection, showcases this fine collection of American art, in a two-volume set featuring 267 exceptional paintings reproduced in full color and illuminated with never-before-published research findings. Works span American history from the colonial period through the close of World War II and are by many of the nation's best-known artists, including Mary Cassatt, Thomas Cole, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Pre-1900 subject strengths reside in portraiture with canvases by John Singleton Copley, John Singer Sargent, and Henry Ossawa Tanner; still lifes by John Peto and Severin Roesin; and landscapes from the brush of Frederic Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, Fitz Henry Lane, Thomas Moran, and others.

Scenes and portraits by artists including John Steuart Curry, Robert Henri, Peter Hurd, Maurice Prendergast, and John Sloan provide honest, enduring assessments of early 20th-century American life. A stunning sample of early Modernism is seen in important canvasses by Albert Bloch, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, and Marsen Hartley, to name a few. Volume 1 includes 140 extended essays on the most important canvases in the collection, which are represented in full-page color reproductions. Volume 2 reproduces in color all the works in the collection and is accompanied by thorough technical notes based on recent object examination, complete provenance, listings of directly related works, and exhaustive exhibition and publication histories. American Paintings is an outstanding resource and a beautifully illustrated record of our country's history and culture.

Select Manet to Matisse Impressionist Masters from the Marion and Henry Bloch Collection to learn more, or to place this book in your Amazon shopping cart. Your Amazon purchase through this link generates a small commission that will help to fund the ArtGeek.art search engine.