From 7 July to 30 September, the Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts played host to a remarkable exhibition, Impressionists by the Sea. Curated by The Courtauld’s Walter H. Annenberg Professor John House, with MaryAnne Stevens, Eliza Rathbone, and Dr Eric Zafran, the exhibition contained 60 paintings by Manet, Monet, and Courbet, among others. Tracing the importance of the French coastline to 19th-century art, this show explored the changing portrayal of this dynamic setting by Impressionists, setting their renderings against more conventionally academic contemporaneous representations of beach scenes by artists such as Whistler and Cazin.


The show was accompanied by a beautiful 144-page catalogue of the same name, which included an essay by Professor House on the pictorial representation of the development of the French seaside during the 19th century, as well as an essay by Dr David Hopkin of Hertford College, Oxford, on the economic interface between traditional fishing industries and new recreational functions.

The exhibition will next travel to The Phillips Collection in Washington from 20 October to 13 January, and will go on to the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, from 9 February to 11 May of next year. The Courtauld wishes to extend its congratulations to Professor John House and his colleagues for their success in this inspiring endeavour.

Janine Catalano Alumni Relations Officer