SLAM presents first exhibition devoted to landscapes by women Impressionists

NOTE: This press release has been updated from a May 19, 2026, version to include information on new SLAM acquisitions being featured in “Women Impressionists and the Land.” 

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 29, 2026—The Saint Louis Art Museum this fall will present “Women Impressionists and the Land,” the first exhibition to focus on landscapes as a distinct body of work essential for understanding the women artists of the Impressionism movement. 

Featuring 70 works—including paintings, works on paper and ceramics—from prestigious international and national museum collections, as well as many private collections, the exhibition makes the case that landscape painting was central to the practice of the women Impressionists and reflective of their assertions of independence at a time when women’s activities outside the home were often constrained. The SLAM-organized exhibition opens Oct. 17 and runs through Jan. 10, 2027, followed by a presentation at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

“Women Impressionists and the Land” centers primarily on the three leading women Impressionists who showed at the Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886—Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Marie Bracquemond. Also included are works by Edma Morisot-Pontillon (Berthe’s sister), Blanche Hoschedé-Monet (stepdaughter and daughter-in-law of Claude Monet), Louise Abbéma, Élodie La Villette and Rosa Bonheur. The presentation includes two works newly acquired by SLAM that have not previously been exhibited: “Still Life With Oranges” by Bracquemond and “Women in Woods” by Morisot-Pontillon.  

The museum’s newly acquired Bracquemond—the first by this artist to enter SLAM’s collection—showcases her connection to the land through its subject matter of nature’s bounty—colorful oranges and a setting of surrounding lilacs, all painted in Bracqeumond’s characteristic dash-like brushstrokes. SLAM’s Morisot-Pontillon painting reflects the strong influence of the Barbizon painters and highlights her accomplished technique in depicting outdoor scenes.  

“Landscape painting was central to the practice of the women Impressionists,” said exhibition curator Simon Kelly, SLAM’s modern and contemporary art curator. “These artists worked outdoors, traveled widely and developed some of the most innovative approaches to capturing the land in the entire Impressionist movement. Yet that contribution has remained largely in the shadow of their domestic interiors and portraiture, and of the landscapes made by their famous male counterparts. This exhibition reclaims these landscapes as a body of work that is radical, ecologically attuned and overdue for serious attention. We are also excited to add these works by Bracquemond and Morisot-Pontillon to our collection, extending our ability to continue sharing this narrative about these artists in the future.” 

The exhibition will unfold across seven galleries. The first, “Rosa Bonheur, the Morisot Sisters, and the Salon in the 1860s,” will orient visitors in women’s landscape practice in mid-19th-century France, with works by Rosa Bonheur alongside early paintings by Morisot and her sister Morisot-Pontillon. Included here are several newly discovered canvases by the Morisot sisters on public view for the first time. The next gallery, “Against the Salon: The Radicalism of Berthe Morisot,” will chart the shift Morisot made from traditional Salon conventions to the Impressionist exhibitions of the 1870s and 1880s—underscoring her position as the movement’s preeminent female landscape painter. 

The third section, “Marie Bracquemond and Invention Across Media,” will include the major, large-scale Bracquemond work “Woman in White” from the Musée d’Orsay. Bracquemond’s landscape practice has only recently begun to receive sustained critical attention, and this gallery will also feature two newly discovered paintings, also on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, that will be displayed for the first time in this exhibition. The fourth section, “Between a Garden and a Park,” will explore the artist’s deep investment in cultivated nature and in particular Morisot’s sustained engagement with the park of the Bois de Boulogne through paintings and a series of drypoints. Also included is Louise Abbéma’s monumental depiction of herself and her lover, the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt, on a lake in the park. 

The fifth section, titled “Painting Rural Agriculture,” will bring together images of rural labor and the working landscape, examining the ways both artists depicted the agricultural terrain around Bougival, Mézy and Giverny. The next section, “Informal Artistic Networks,” will trace the evolution of Morisot’s late style and the developing network between Morisot, Cassatt and Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, who emerged as a plein air painter in her own right. And the seventh and final gallery, “ ‘My place in the country’: Mary Cassatt at the Château de Beaufresne,” will focus on the last decades of Cassatt’s career and her deep attachment to the gardens and pond of her country estate north of Paris. 

“Impressionism is one of the most-beloved chapters in the history of Western art, and yet this exhibition demonstrates how much of that story remains to be told,” said Min Jung Kim, the Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum. “This exhibition will assemble a remarkable group of works that, shown together, reposition these artists at the center of a movement that has too often been told predominantly through the achievements of their male peers. Featuring an array of important loans, ‘Women Impressionists and the Land’ reflects the beauty and creativity we so enjoy sharing with our audiences.” 

“Women Impressionists and the Land” will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, edited by Simon Kelly and published by Holberton and Yale University Press, with eight essays by leading Impressionism scholars including Kelly, Mary Morton, Nicole Georgopulos, Elizabeth Childs, Sylvie Patry, Galina Olmsted, Nicole Myers and Abigail Yoder. 

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