This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first display of Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise which, while completed in 1872, was not exhibited until 1874.  A reviewer at the time termed it “impressionist” and the name of the movement was born.

Hearthstone will emphasize not only this milestone but also its own art and clothing collections with an exhibit entitled Cloth and Canvas. Located throughout the museum, the exhibit will highlight Hearthstone’s remarkable historic clothing collection alongside museum-quality reproductions of avant-garde French 19th century art that depict articles of clothing similar to pieces in the museum’s collection.

As an example… Imagine Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, executed in 1877 and which hangs in the Art Institute in Chicago, informally placed on a settee next to a top hat, an umbrella, and a women’s veiled hat that are identical to those depicted, generating an interplay between the items and the artist’s work.

The Rogers family, as regular upper-crust visitors and then residents of Chicago who were mixing with the city’s elite, would have been exposed to the Impressionist works that were being brought to the city by the Gold Coast elite.  In fact, these pieces constituted the foundation of the Art Institute’s Impressionism collection.

Cloth and Canvas explores a multitude of connections:

·  The interplay of clothing and its representation in painting.

·  The Gilded Age’s nouveau riche and their impact on taste and style.

·  The early connection between Chicago and European centers of art, particularly Paris.

·  The Rogers’ time in Chicago and their possible exposure to such new art.

·  Hearthstone’s historic clothing collection.

·  Hearthstone’s unparalleled art collection.

Cloth and Canvas will be included on the museum’s regular daytime tours. The museum will also host separately tickets specialty tours on art and clothing.