Assessment: ***Highly recommended
If in your trip to Madrid you plan to take advantage of visit the impressionism exhibition of the Maphre Foundation, on Paseo de Recoletos 23, which is open to the public until April 22, 2010, it is advisable to take into account some details.
After the visit I have made to said exhibition, where we can enjoy some of the masterpieces of the impressionist painting from the Orsay Museum in Paris, with free entry, I'm going to give you four basic tips.
How to avoid lines to enter the exhibition
I have to tell you that it is almost inevitable to have to queue to visit the impressionism exhibition in Madrid. The only solution to try to avoid queues is to visit the exhibition first thing in the morning, arriving at 9:30 a.m. At other times, it will take us between an hour and two hours to get in to see the exhibition, being much more complicated on weekends.
Of course, late in the morning, at lunch time, the lines are somewhat shorter. Therefore, my advice is to be patient.
Take a guided tour
The guided tours at the impressionist painting exhibition of the Maphre Foundation only take place Tuesdays. To take a guided tour you have to wait in the general queue and, at the end, when you are about to enter, you will join the waiting area for the guided tours.
The guided tours take place every 20 minutes, so apart from the waiting time in line, then, depending on when the next guided tour starts, you will have or less additional time.
Do the visit with an audio guide
As soon as you enter the exhibition hall of the Maphre Foundation, on the right you have the counter with the audio guides. I advise you to use this service (3 euros), which will allow you to understand the meaning of the exhibition and the importance of the Impressionist movement in Paris at the end of the XNUMXth century.
How to tour the impressionism exhibition
Although as soon as you enter you will see that paintings are displayed in the opposite room. If no one tells you, you have to go to the right towards the elevator to go up to the first floor.
To properly visit the impressionist painting exhibition, you even have to start in the room that you find as soon as you exit the elevator.
You will be surprised that in the first rooms there are no impressionist paintings. This is because the exhibition also incorporates works of the academic movement, with realist and symbolist styles, which was preeminent in Paris when the transgressive Impressionist movement emerged. Thus, you will find first works, among others, by Millet y Bouguereau.
You will have your first encounter with impressionists with Degas, with its famous dancers, in the play “The dance class”, and his paintings of the environment at the racecourse.
The next works you will see are those of the impressionists Many, Renoir y Sisleyhighlighting “The San Lázaro Station” of Monet and "The swing" by Renoir. Later you will find works of Pissarro (" The frost") y Cezanne, and you will understand the influence of their great friendship on their artistic expression.
After taking the elevator to the ground floor, in the rooms in this area you will again see works that do not belong to the famous French impressionist painters. Thus, you will see some paintings of the so-called hispanistsas Regnault, who are greatly influenced by the realism of the great Spanish painters such as Velazquez. And you will also be able to see one of the great works of North American painting of the time, “The artist's mother”, Whistler.
Also noteworthy is the large realistic painting of Henry Fantin-Latour, with a group scene of the main representatives of the impressionist movement.
And finally, in a small room, right at the end of the exhibition, you will find one of the great masterpieces of the exhibition, “The Fife” de Manet, along with some other works by this painter.
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