This extraordinary exhibition explores how and why 19th century French painters repeated themselves in their paintings – often painting the same scene over and over – for deliberate and defined purposes. In fact, much of the history of European painting is of artists meaningfully repeating themselves, returning to a theme, or even duplicating their own designs. This exhibition examines – in approximately 60 of the most famous paintings, watercolors, sculptures and etchings by such artists as David, Delacroix, Gérôme, Corot, Millet, Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Matisse and others – how French painters in the 19th and early 20th centuries used repetition and what repetition came to mean for them as individual artists. The 13 case-studies in the exhibition provide an unprecedented opportunity to compare different versions of masterpieces and to instigate a conversation about originality and mastery.

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