New angles on impressionism.(Report from Europe)(works of Pierre Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet in the National Gallery)

Lesser-known aspects of the work of two impressionist painters--Pierre Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet--are being examined in complementary exhibitions now on view in London. The National Gallery is offering Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883, which includes about seventy paintings from public and private collections. Although Renoir painted landscapes throughout his life, the show looks at his early efforts created during the first two decades of his career. The earliest work, A Clearing in the Woods, was made soon after Renoir met Monet, Paul Cezanne, and Alfred Sisley in 1861. As the artists frequently worked alongside one another, they often painted the same scene but in different ways. The latest painting in the exhibition is Fog on Guernsey (Brouillard a Guernsey) of 1883. After 1883 Renoir increasingly concentrated on figure painting, and his landscapes were less experimental.

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Monet is probably best known for his series of oil paintings exploring light at various times of the day and year. His drawings and pastels are not as familiar. About eighty are on show, many for the first time, in an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts called The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings. They help to reveal ...