Whether you are an extreme art fan or not, it is hard to argue with the grandeur of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s (SBMA) newest collection featuring the Impressionist masters of Europe. The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse exhibit houses work from the greats such as Claude Monet and Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Berthe Morisot, and even a series of haystacks by Vincent Van Gogh, all on a loan from the Dallas Museum of Art since October.
SBMA
This Impressionist exhibition is not only in celebration of the impact that Impressionism had on art in the 20th century, but it also recognizes the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition. Santa Barbara Museum’s Art Director, Amanda Cruz, reminds us, “[Museums are] not just about preserving objects. [They’re] about celebrating human creativity.”
SBMA’s commitment to this is nothing short of obvious in this exhibition, as well as the sister show Encore:19th-Century French Art from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, which takes viewers on an art-led tour around Paris and France. The Encore allows viewers to experience 19th-century France through the eyes of its creatives. Whether whisked away to the chilly beaches of Normandy or transported to the bustling streets of Paris, Encore cannot be described as anything but a pure celebration of human creativity. This exhibit enhances the majesty of the The Impressionist Revolution, hosting, for the first time, all four of SBMA’s Monet landscape paintings at once. My favorite of these looks like a snapshot straight of a Montecito hillside, despite Monet’s title, Villas in Bordighera (1884).
Monet
Your first steps into the Impressionist exhibit will lead you straight to one of Monet’s stunning Poplars paintings, glowing with the pink hues of a dusk or dawn sun. The edges of the trees are fringed with warmth, while Monet’s signature blues and greens blend seamlessly from reality to reflection, and his mastery of the brush translates across the canvas in sweeping strokes.
In the vicinity of this already beautiful first impression, hangs two paintings from Monet’s most famous Water Lilies collection. The one to the left of the Poplars is dark and moody, full of royal blues and deep purples that evoke a lazy late evening by the pond. Right across from the Poplars hangs a luminous portrayal of the Water Lilies on a more sunny occasion, each petal glowing with early sunlight. Alongside these iconic pieces of Monet’s career, many of his lesser-known landscapes are also displayed, providing a sampling of his work across decades.
Matisse and Beyond
Alongside these iconic pieces of history, the collection features a striking contrast between the soft organic flow of Monet and the more stark, geometric boldness of Matisse in paintings such as Pont Saint-Michel (1901), which finds beauty in the more urban, industrial landscape of a city bridge. The combination of Monet’s cool tableaus of pastoral serenity and Matisse’s vibrant urban sprawls captures not only the innovative experimentation of the time period but also the variety of the movement.
Beyond the differences between Monet and Matisse, the paintings of Paul Signac and Berthe Morisot create an even more interesting perspective on the fluctuations within the Impressionist genre. Signac’s pastel pointillism, Mont Saint-Michel, Setting Sun (1897), makes viewers dance back and forth in front of the canvas, witnessing the optical illusion created by the ombre spattering of dots across the canvas. Berthe Morisot’s The Port of Nice (1881-1882) leaves some of the canvas shining through the paint, a surprisingly intimate unfinished-ness surrounding it.
Get Your Ticket!
Whether as a first-timer, headed to visit world-renowned pieces of art, or simply to make another trip as a SBMA regular, I would absolutely call this exhibit worth it! As a Santa Barbara Country student the entry price is only $15 to visit works of art whose compatriots hang in galleries at The Louvre, Musee D’Orsay, and The MET, as well as the museum’s permanent exhibits, ranging from stunning photography to textile art, for free!
In a smaller beach town like Santa Barbara, even despite its affluence, somewhere between overpaying for a dirty chai and biking to check out the surf, it is easy to forget that there is a huge world of constantly evolving, differing, and vast culture out there. That is why I feel that when opportunities come knocking to experience more than what is always readily available to us, it is always worth it to open the door and go check it out.
The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse exhibit is open until January 25, 2026 and is, in my opinion, the perfect way to spend a weekend celebrating human creativity throughout history. Tickets are on sale here or on entrance to the museum, just make sure to bring your student ID! The world of Impressionism is waiting!