En jeu ! Artists and sport (1870-1930)

From 4th April to 1^st September 2024, sport and art become one. To mark the Cultural Olympiad, the Musée Marmottan-Monet is offering a new look at sport during the Second Empire with the exhibition En jeu ! Artists and sport (1870-1930).

À l’occasion des Jeux Olympiques et Paralympiques de Paris 2024, les premiers organisés depuis cent ans, dans la capitale, cette exposition retracera l’histoire visuelle du sport entre 1870 à 1930 à travers plus d’une centaines œuvres significatives provenant de collections publiques et privées d’Europe, des États-Unis et du Japon (musée national du Sport de Nice, musée d’Orsay, Centre Pompidou, musée Fabre de Montpellier, National Gallery of Art de Washington, Yale University Art Gallery de New Haven, la collection Peggy Guggenheim de Venise…).

Home to an impressive collection and the mecca of Impressionism, the Musée Marmottan Monet depicts, through its works, a portrait of the society of the second half of the 19^th century, which gradually took pleasure in taking advantage of its free time to pursue sporting and leisure activities on land or water. These new activities, the majority of which were initiated under the Second Empire, held a key place in the production of the Impressionist group, where natural elements and Modernity combined. Certain Impressionist paintings from the museum’s collections and some of Monet’s sketch pads, preserved in-situ, bear witness to the growing popularity of such pursuits.

Louise Abbéma, Pierre Bonnard, Antoine Bourdelle, Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Robert Delaunay, Maurice Denis, Thomas Eakins, Émile Friant, Théodore Géricault, Max Klinger, Aristide Maillol, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Félicien Rops, Paul Signac, Alfred Sisley, and Kees Van Dongen are some of the masters gathered here to celebrate the interest of artists in the subject of sports, both through the prism of Modernity and societal change in the exhibition En jeu ! Artists and sport (1870-1930).