Outstanding Additions to the Collection of the Museum Barberini
January 2024 - Claude Monet’s The Mill at Limetz (1888) and Camille Pissarro’s The Louvre, Morning, Spring (1902), acquired by the Hasso Plattner Foundation in late 2023, joined the collection presentation in the Museum Barberini in January of this year. The Hasso Plattner Collection, exhibited in the museum on permanent loan from the Foundation, now comprises 113 masterpieces of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, including thirty-nine paintings by Claude Monet.
Hasso Plattner Colection
Claude Monet: The Mill at Limetz, 1888
The Mill at Limetz is an outstanding example of Monet’s mature Impressionist style. The composition is dominated by the dense foliage of the trees, rendered in rich hues of blue, green, and violet. The stone grain mill of Limetz appears in the right background, as if crowded to the edge of the picture. The unusual choice of vantage point intensifies the sense of immediacy—a key feature of Impressionism.
The Louvre, Morning, Spring belongs to a group of around sixty paintings of Paris created by Pissarro on the Île de la Cité in the early twentieth century. Inspired by the series pictures of Claude Monet, Pissarro also executed his works as a series. Together with six other pieces in the Hasso Plattner Collection, the painting forms the point of departure for a major Pissarro retrospective to be presented at the Museum Barberini in the summer of 2025.
Hasso Plattner Collection
Camille Pissarro: The Louvre, Morning, Spring, 1902
“We are delighted that the Foundation has acquired these outstanding examples of Impressionist painting. These purchases strengthen Potsdam’s position as a collection site where French Impressionist landscape painting can be experienced more comprehensively than almost anywhere else. I am extraordinarily pleased that we are able to present the two works to the public one day after the eightieth birthday of museum founder Hasso Plattner.”
“The expansion of the Hasso Plattner Collection goes hand in hand with the planning of numerous projects based on this singular collection—including major special exhibitions devoted to Vlaminck, Pissarro, and Signac. Our focus on the great colorists of French modernism is especially exciting in the context of the international year of Impressionism in 2024.”
The presentation of these two new acquisitions inaugurates the Museum Barberini’s extensive activities in honor of the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, a movement founded in 1874 with the first of the eight so-called “Impressionist” exhibitions in Paris. The circle of Impressionists included not only Monet and Pissarro, but also other artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Alfred Sisley — all pioneers of French modernism who are represented with outstanding works in the Hasso Plattner Collection.
Throughout the anniversary year, the Museum Barberini will highlight Impressionism and Post-Impressionism with a wide range of projects. A public symposium on May 15 and 16 will explore the significance of international Impressionism in light of current lines of questioning. Digital projects include an innovative music application for the collection, a project on provenance research, and an English-language version of the successful podcast "Monet – Times of Change". The Barberini App and other digital content related to the collection will also continue to be developed on an ongoing basis. The program of events accompanying the exhibitions will celebrate Impressionism in tours, workshops, readings, and special visitors’ days.
The exhibition Maurice de Vlaminck: Modern Artist Rebel will be on view starting September 14, 2024, the first posthumous retrospective of the artist’s work in a German museum. Other Impressionism-related projects in the Museum Barberini will include exhibitions on Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, and Max Liebermann.
