Scraping the barrel

Here are two of the big hitters of Impressionism, both represented by shows which only investigate very particular aspects of their work. Monet and Renoir are names guaranteed to provide good box-office returns, but will the public be satisfied by the choice of work attached to their brand labels? Of course the RA and NG need to generate income from exhibitions in these increasingly expensive times, though both have managed to secure sponsors to help defray the costs of their shows. The RA exhibition comes with a vast doorstop of a catalogue, stuffed full of worthy scholarship, making the art-historical case for the importance of Monet’s hitherto largely unknown pastels and drawings. But the show itself is a thin one, and the public would be forgiven for feeling disappointed at the limited riches on display for the £8 admission. The Renoir is a more blatant attempt at populism, but is equally questionable in terms of raison d’être. Are these exhibitions a cynical exploitation of the public’s urge to see work it thinks it will like? Or are they simply a mark of the desperation rife among the governing bodies of our great art institutions?

The Monet show begins quietly with a surprising (but not very interesting) group of caricatures, done by the young artist in a popular style of the day, thankfully juxtaposed with pleasant pencil drawings of trees and a watermill. From the first, this exhibition seems to be scraping the barrel. It’s not, as it suggests, a show of drawings and pastels, but of oil paintings interspersed with drawings and pastels. And there is so little actually on show that one gallery has to be filled up with lithographs by William Thornley done after Monet, with a section given over to computer screens (always a giveaway), where you can pretend you are looking at Monet’s sketchbooks.