The Belvedere Museum in Vienna is hosting a classic Impressionist exhibition featuring works by Cézanne, Monet, and Renoir, marking a rare return to traditional blockbuster art shows. The exhibition, displayed in the Orangery of the Lower Belvedere, offers visitors a chance to experience atmospheric street scenes, magnificent light compositions, and still lifes painted in luminous colors that continue to captivate audiences 150 years after Impressionism was first developed.

Vienna has historically been underserved when it comes to works by the French Impressionist artists who were long considered the driving force of modern art, including masters like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Degas. Before the Albertina Museum established a permanent collection with the acquisition of the Batliner Collection (promoted with the names Monet to Picasso), art enthusiasts had to rely on expensive loan exhibitions to see these works.

Such presentations have become increasingly rare due to exploding prices in the art market, which have driven up insurance costs for artworks that are now sent on loan under increasingly strict conditions. At the same time, art history has become more interested in phenomena that don't follow the traditional march of artistic styles like Impressionism, Expressionism, and Surrealism.

The current exhibition at the Lower Belvedere's Orangery features beautiful girl portraits by Auguste Renoir, wonderful still lifes by Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, and a rare painting of a frozen lake by Claude Monet. Despite being highly recommendable for Impressionism fans, the exhibition doesn't present itself as a typical blockbuster event.

This show is actually a guest presentation from the Langmatt Museum in Baden near Zurich, Switzerland, which must close until 2026 for major renovations and has sent its treasures to Lausanne, Cologne, and now Vienna. Rather than being a contemporary blockbuster, the exhibition serves as a time capsule. Unlike later Impressionism collectors whose collections ended up in museums (Batliner in Vienna, Corboud in Cologne), Sidney and Jenny Brown purchased their paintings around 1900, when the artistic movement was still viewed quite critically.

The Villa Langmatt, where the couple lived with their artworks, was created as an Art Nouveau jewel, comparable to the houses that Vienna's progressive elite had built on locations like Hohe Warte. The exhibition architecture combines retro art salon feeling with contemporary flair, allowing visitors to learn extensively about the collectors, their lifestyle, and their preferences.

Sidney Brown, who worked in the company Brown, Boveri & Co. (now ABB) founded by his brother Charles, was essentially a startup entrepreneur and beneficiary of the energy transition. The company supplied essential components for electricity generation and electric locomotives. Similar to the Vienna-area couple Hugo Koller and Broncia Koller-Pinell, who achieved prosperity through electrical engineering and distinguished themselves as patrons of Egon Schiele, the Browns also sought to differentiate themselves through progressive artistic taste.

While the Browns oriented themselves toward France, they also appreciated Max Oppenheimer, who was originally from Vienna, as demonstrated by two portraits the painter created of the couple that are featured in the exhibition. Unlike many Austrian patrons, the Brown family was spared from Nazi terror, and their collection remained a privately guarded treasure until one of the couple's sons died in 1987 and left a will stipulating that the villa and art collection be converted into a museum.

The urgently needed renovation was made possible in 2023 when the foundation sold some works, and the Baden population voted with almost 80 percent approval to contribute ten million Swiss francs. The Vienna guest exhibition can thus also be understood as a lesson in the appreciation of art and patronage by the general public, demonstrating how communities can come together to preserve cultural heritage for future generations.