Anywhere you travel, great art is rarely far away. Lovers of Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and impressionism should be enthralled by these shows:
• "Van Gogh and Nature," at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., is one of the summer's choice art attractions. It hangs through Sept. 13.
Van Gogh is one of those artists you just want to spend time with, no pretext needed, because he's some kind of instant soul mate -- startling, difficult, vulnerable, always willing to make so much of himself available to you.
"Nature is very, very beautiful here," van Gogh wrote to his younger brother Theo in the summer of 1890, a few weeks before he took his life. He was referring to the landscape of olive groves and grain fields surrounding the town of Auvers-sur-Oise northwest of Paris, where he had moved, after a hospitalization, to be closer to family. He had written almost identical words in other letters, from other places, over the years. Natural beauty was the first thing he noticed wherever he went.
Works in the exhibit span his career, including balanced compositions of patchwork fields and tree-lined roads and fantastic landscapes. The Sower, with its single figure marching across what looks like a boiling lava stream of blue and orange paint with a giant sun embedded like a bullet in the sky.
Rain-Auvers (1890) was partly inspired by a Japanese print of figures dashing over a blond-wood bridge in a downpour. In van Gogh's version, the bridge becomes a horizontal, plateaulike wheat field, split down the center by a kind of valley-crevasse from which flame-shaped purple trees lick up, as a black crow floats in midair. Most arrestingly, the entire painting is covered with a net of descending diagonal lines, lines of rain.
If you've known van Gogh as a longtime friend, you'll know that he's bold as a questioner, but shy as an answerer. He doesn't explain himself. He doesn't have to.
Information: clarkart.edu.
SARGENT PORTRAITS
• "Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends" hangs through Oct. 4. This Sargent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art focuses on the celebrated artist's portraits of famous friends.
The American artist was a leading society portraitist at the turn of the 20th century who studied in Paris and lived in London.
The 90 works include one of Claude Monet painting outdoors. Other portraits include Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson.
Information: metmuseum.org.
IMPRESSIONISTS IN PHILLY
• "Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting" is a new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which traces the development of impressionism and highlights the role a Parisian art dealer played in its success.
It runs through Sept. 13.
The exhibition spans 1865-1905 and includes works by Edouard Manet, Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Mary Cassatt.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the exhibit's only U.S. venue.
Information: philamuseum.org.
Travel on 07/05/2015