Impressionism

Over the past 20 years Annapolis has grown into a center of American Impressionism. From the beginning, artist Lee Boynton has been a major participant, known for his ability to capture light in watercolor and oil. Boynton studied with American Impressionist Henry Hensche, who concentrated on color and light at his Cape Cod School of Art. In 1983 Boynton watched the 82-year-old artist paint still lifes in vivid color, describing Hensche as "creating sunlight...

HAVING VISITED the Monet show at the Walters Art Gallery last week, I understand why, 100 years after impressionism set the art world on its ear, you have to work hard to see what all the fuss was about.Impressionism, once so avant-garde that only a handful of devotees took it seriously, has become its own cliche.We have been so bombarded, propagandized, proselytized and evangelized by the aesthetic of Monet and his contemporaries that not only do they no longer seem revolutionary, they are positively old hat, terminally bourgeois, middle-class to the core.

Is there anyone left in the observable universe who doesn't know that the Impressionists were great painters as well as fine fellows who loved life to the hilt? There must be, because we keep being bombarded by blockbuster museum shows intent on pounding that lesson home. Like the return of warm weather in spring, each new year brings a big new Impressionist show. This year's installment takes the form of "Impressionists at Argenteuil" at the National Gallery in Wash- ington, a mass-market behemoth that even one sympathetic New York reviewer drolly called "the umpteenth repackaging of an evergreen late-19th-century painting style."

McBride Gallery's current exhibition, The Young Impressionists, opened Sunday with a reception for the three award-winning artists, Tim Bell, Stephen Griffin and Abigail McBride. Chats with each artist revealed that they are true Impressionists who in a mere 90 minutes can permanently capture the beauty of nature in momentary light on their canvases. All three have studied with Cedric and Jeanette Egeli of Annapolis and at the Cape Cod School of Art, founded in 1931 by American Impressionist Henry Hensche, a disciplined student of nature and the conditions of light.

From 1893 to 1903, Pierre Bonnard created more than 35 images for a seminal French literary and artistic journal called La Revue blanche, as well as giant posters advertising the periodical. These early lithographs by Bonnard were gestural sketches that built on Impressionism's "fleeting moments" concept by layering on meaning and patterns. "Anybody who is anybody reads La Revue," the image hints. "Read it, and you too can be somebody." It was a message that was perfectly consistent with the populist agenda that Bonnard and his friend Edouard Vuillard espoused.

Talk about an impressive reception! Some of the Baltimore Museum of Art's biggest supporters gathered at the museum for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres and a preview of the BMA's newest exhibition, "Faces of Impressionism: Portraits From American Collections." A dinner, honoring Gov. and Mrs. Parris Glendening, followed, in the museum's Fox Court.Among the faces making an impression in this crowd of 98: Doreen Bolger, BMA director; Sona Johnston, exhibition curator; Tony Deering, BMA board chair; Abe Rosenthal, Stiles Colwell and Ed Tabor, board members; Mayo Shattuck, Deutsche Banc Alex.

The weather forecast is somewhat unsettling for the annual Flower Mart, the Baltimore tradition scheduled for today at Mount Vernon Place (rain date is tomorrow). But regardless of weather, this is a great day to celebrate spring around that elegant square experiencing a renaissance of late.At the Walters Art Gallery, spring is gloriously reflected in the colors of 87 masterworks of American impressionism. Interesting exhibits are also on view at the nearby Maryland Historical Society.The Flower Mart has been part of Baltimore's springtime for more than 75 years.

By now, everybody knows the Impressionists were fine fellows who broke through the stuffy conventions of 19th-century French academic art to breathe fresh air into landscape, portraiture and still life. It's been pounded into our heads that Impressionism was the most interesting, eye-pleasing development in art since the invention of perspective during the Renaissance - lots of pretty girls, handsome men and an endless springtime of fruits, flowers and foliage under luminous, cloud-filled skies.

We were at the beach over the weekend. The well-tended gardens and containers at Bethany Beach shone brilliantly with color. What a difference they make to visitors coming into the commercial district. Every year the median of Garfield Parkway is meticulously planted with annuals. We've watched the woman who designs the area plant in spring. This weekend I wished I'd seen her to congratulate her on this year's color combinations and plant selections.   I'd also be curious to know about the partnership between Bethany Beach and Périers, France mentioned on a nearby sign.

Artists have been on intimate terms with nature since the earliest drawings of prehistoric animals went up on the walls of caves. Since then, artists of every generation have continued to explore the natural world and its connection to the expressive soul. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were no exception to this trend, which is the point of "American Landscapes from the Paine Art Center and Gardens," an exhibit of 48 landscape paintings and prints that will be on display at St. John's College's Mitchell Gallery in Annapolis from Tuesday through Feb. 23. These works, by such luminaries as James McNeill Whistler, George Inness, Winslow Homer and Grant Wood, offer varying moods and takes on the ever-changing connection between the natural world and the artists who study it so intensely to capture its aesthetic messages.