Paris shows how the democratization of sport inspired the Impressionists

Paris (France), April 3 (EFE).- The democratization of horse riding, rowing and boxing at the end of the 19th century inspired a whole cast of impressionist artists, whose vision of that historical moment now bursts into the programming of the Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad.

Camera: Raquel Fernández.

STATEMENTS BY THE DIRECTOR OF THE MARMOTTAN MONET MUSEUM, ERIK DESMAZIERES.

The aim of this exhibition is to show the representation of sport between a specific period, 1870, which was also the beginning of impressionist painting, and 1930, which was the end of post-impressionism. The idea is to show that during this period a mutation took place. Sport, which at the beginning was very Anglo-Saxon, very elitist, very England, whether it was horseback riding, rowing, boxing, all these activities were very much in the privileged world, but from then on, France was very much attracted to England, especially after the '70 war against the Germans. So France leaned towards England. And all these activities took place in France, but they started to become more popular, more democratic.

We took the opportunity to show that several artists were sportsmen. But the exhibition first shows this evolution. The exhibition also shows that sport has generated paintings of very high artistic quality. It was a new theme, which we wanted to show. This explains the variety of supports and media shown. In other words, sporting activity, the representation of sport, is expressed in painting, sculpture, photography, records and also a bit of cinema.

The Marmottan Museum is more of a museum...Marmottan was not at all a collector of Impressionism; he was a man of the imperial period. But then, with Claude Monet's donations, it became a museum dedicated to Impressionism, a very important museum for Impressionist painting. That is why we have focused our study on the period that interests the museum, that is, the beginnings of Impressionism in 1870, when the flagship painting of Impressionism, Impression, rising sun, was painted in 1872, and we have looked at the post-Impressionist period, that is, until 1930. We have not wanted to go further because it is not the museum's preferred field, and also because it is an extremely vast subject.

Indeed, it was a period in which sport acquired great spectacularity, first of all thanks to the construction of large sports facilities, whether stadiums or racecourses, the great racecourses of France. For example, the Chantilly and Longchamp racecourses were built between 1870 and 1900. Stadiums were also built at that time. It was also at that time that some stars were born in the world of sports, whether they were soccer or boxing champions. Boxing is perhaps the field in which people from very modest origins have become great, great popular figures.

Some boxing matches in the 1920s drew hundreds of thousands of people. The MC Carpentier fight in the United States was a fight for which they had built an open-air stadium because there were so many people. It was a time when sport took on a completely different dimension, and soccer, for example, took on a completely different dimension.