William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905), Girl Eating Porridge, 1874, oil on canvas, 38 1/2 x 24 1/2 in., Cincinnati Art Museum, Bequest of Reuben R. Springer, 1884.335
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926), The Haystack, 1891, oil on canvas, 28 7/8 x 36 1/2 in., Private collection
Victor Gabriel Gilbert (French, 1847–1933), The Square in Front of Les Halles, 1880, oil on panel, 21 1/8 x 29 in., Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre, 163
Victoria Dubourg Fantin-Latour, (French, 1840–1926), Still Life with Brioche, c. 1890, oil on canvas, 13 1/8 x 17 in., Dixon Gallery and Gardens; Museum purchase with funds provided by the estate of Cecil Williams Marshall and, by transfer, Mr. and Mrs. Morrie A. Moss, 2019.6
Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903), The Gardener - Old Peasant with Cabbage, 1883-95, oil on canvas, 32 x 25 1/2 in., National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.6
Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism
June 13–September 21, 2025
Western & Southern Galleries (Galleries 232 and 233)
Ticketed. Free for Members. Save $2 when purchasing tickets online.
One ticket, two exhibitions! If you buy a ticket for Farm to Table from June 13–August 24, 2025, you can use that same ticket to see Cycle Thru! The Art of the Bike!
Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism explores the intersections of art, gastronomy, and national identity in fin-de-siècle France. The exhibition showcases over sixty paintings and sculptures, including the work of Claude Monet, Eva Gonzalès, Victor Gilbert, Paul Gauguin, Jules Dalou, and Vincent van Gogh, artists who examined the nation’s unique relationship with food. The bounty of France’s agriculture and the skill of its chefs had long helped to define its strength and position on the international stage. This self-image as the world’s culinary capital became more important in the late nineteenth century as the country grappled with war, political instability, imperialism, and industrialization. In this climate, France’s culinary traditions signaled notions of its refinement, fortitude, and ingenuity while they also exposed fractures that destabilized national identity. From cultivation to consumption, food was central to notions of glory but also to those of collective pain. Farm to Table puts this history on view through the eyes and hands of the period’s greatest artists, who avidly brought subjects from agricultural fields to Parisian dining rooms into their painting and sculpture, documenting and reinforcing monumental cultural shifts at the heart of European modernity.
Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism
Edited by Andrew Eschelbacher and Lloyd DeWitt
With contributors by Allison Deutsch, Simon Kelly, Marni Kessler, and Shalini Le Gall
Published by Yale University Press in association with the Chrysler Museum of Art and the American Federation of Arts
Hardcover, 224 pages, 9 1/2 x 11 in., ISBN: 978-0-30027-381-6
Price: $50
Accompanying the traveling exhibition of the same name, Farm to Table showcases representations of sumptuous ingredients and severe privation, bountiful meals and agrarian crises. More than one hundred illustrations highlight the possibilities and precariousness of France’s colonial and industrial projects; the evolving norms of gender and class; the tenuous relationship between Paris and the provinces; and shifting understandings of science and the environment. Depictions of markets and gardens, farmers, chefs, and restaurants expressed cultural anxieties and aspirations. With essays exploring the economics of wheat growing and the dairy industry, the relationship between food and gender, and the role of colonialism, the catalogue spans the age of Impressionism and provides a new way to consider the era’s depictions of modern life at the intersection of art, food, and social politics.
Andrew Eschelbacher, formerly the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the American Federation of Arts, is the Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.
Lloyd DeWitt, formerly Chief Curator and Irene Leache Curator of European Art at the Chrysler Museum of Art, is the Richard and Janet Geary Curator of European and American Art Pre-1930 at the Portland Art Museum.
The exhibition, originally titled Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism, is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Chrysler Museum of Art. The exhibition is generously supported by Martha MacMillan and Monique Schoen Warshaw. Additional support has been provided by Betsy S. Barbanell, Lee White Galvis, Allan Green, Clare E. McKeon and the Clare McKeon Charitable Fund, Betsy Pinover Schiff, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, and the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Additional support provided by the Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.
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