Tour the city of love with Passport to Paris at the Denver Art Museum

A century after they first shared exhibition space in the salons of Paris, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro are together again, this time for a trio of shows at the Denver Art Museum.

“Passport to Paris” surveys 300 years of French painting and brings together nearly 150 master works by such luminaries as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne — a virtual who’s who of impressionist and post-impressionist painters.

Under the headings “Court to Café,” “Nature As Muse” and “Drawing Room,” the exhibit will showcase works from the Wadsworth Atheneum of Hartford, Connecticut, the Frederic C. Hamilton Collection and the Esmond Bradley Martin Collection , the latter two housed at the DAM. You’d have to travel the globe to match the combined stature of these collected works.

The suite of shows opens Oct. 27 and runs through Feb. 9, which should give visitors plenty of time to explore the progression of French art over three centuries beginning with the court of Louis XIV.

“The three parts of this show will only be seen (together) here in Denver,” explains Christoph Heinrich, the director of the Denver Art Museum and one of the curators of the shows. “The Court show is from one of the most significant collections of French art in the country (Hartford) and this collection travels. The two other shows were specifically conceived for Denver. ‘Nature’s Muse’ is the first time the private collection of Frederic Hamilton will be on view here in Denver. And ‘Drawing Room’ is a collection of Old Master drawings from private collections at the museum. They’ve never been on display together.”

Given the number of great painters in the show — even lesser known lights like Nicolas Poussin and Francois Boucher get their due—one wonders who the star of this exhibit might be.

“In all three shows we will have 11 works by Claude Monet, one of the most significant and beloved artists of the 19th century,” Heinrich observes. “Altogether it’s almost like a little Claude Monet retrospective. It starts with an early caricature he did as a rebellious schoolboy, and goes through some late water lily paintings. Beyond that, all the big names of French art are represented.”

As it did with the Italian Renaissance show “Cities of Splendor” in 2011, the museum is making “Passport to Paris” a sensory experience. The Colorado Symphony Orchestra will perform period French music at 1 p.m. Saturdays from Nov. 2 to Feb. 9, and the museum has borrowed period clothing and furniture from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to provide atmosphere and context.

“(The furniture and music) are really transporting the spirit of the time,” Heinrich said. “We wanted to cover 300 years of French culture, history and taste. Of course, the art is front and center, but the show is also about the time, an incredibly dense time in French history. So it starts with the court of Louis XIV, goes through Rococo and French Revolution, and ends in the early 20th century.”

Visit Denvermuseum.org for more information.