Ann Dumas, a leading independent scholar on Impressionism, talks about the Impressionists dialogue with the art of the past. The popular view of Impressionism is that it broke completely from the artistic traditions of previous centuries. In truth, the Impressionists copied the Old Masters and transformed their motifs and compositions into something completely new.
Ann Dumas, an independent scholar and curator based in London, is co-curator (with Timothy Standring) of Inspiring Impressionism. Her field of interest is 19th and early 20th century French painting. She is affiliated with the Royal Academy of Arts with whom she has curated a number of exhibitions, including Matisse: His Art and His Textiles, and 1900: Art at the Crossroads, and Paris: Capital of the Arts for which she was co-curator. For the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Dumas curated The Private Collection of Edgar Degas and From Czanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant Garde. Also a consulting curator for the Columbus Museum of Art, Dumas recently curated Renoirs Women and The Last Landscapes of Degas for that institution. She began her career as a research assistant at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and worked as an associate curator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Dumas studied the history of art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, England.