After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art review – A show with enough great works to be worthwhile

The National Gallery’s show may present a well-known story as though it’s a new discovery, but many paintings are worth the price of admission

‘Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)’, Paul Cézanne, about 1894 – 1905 (The National Gallery, London)

Apparently Impressionism evolved in a number of directions, each of which had a massive impact on art in the 20th century. Good Lord. Who knew? Well, probably the vast majority of the likely audience for this major exhibition at the National Gallery for a start.

The story of the great late 19th-century/early 20th-century revolution in visual perception – the subject of this show – is probably the most frequently told in art. It gave rise to some of the most genuinely popular art ever created. You may have heard of a bloke called Van Gogh. If it seems more than faintly risible for the National to be trying to spring this well-worn narrative on us as though it’s a big surprise – while bringing in all the hugely bankable artists that come with it – there is a backstory. This was to have been a joint exhibition with Moscow’s Pushkin Museum, which has some of the world’s greatest holdings of early modern art. A certain conflict put paid to that, and rather than cancel the National bravely decided to continue, supplementing masterpieces from its own collection with interesting loans from around the world. 

After Impressionism aims to tell a geographically expanded story on what we’ve come to think of as Post-Impressionism (though it studiously avoids using the term), taking in not just the great modernist capital Paris, but parallel developments in Brussels, Barcelona, Berlin and Vienna.