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The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond will open ‘French Photography in the Age of Impressionism’ on November 21, 2026, bringing together photographs from its permanent collection in an exhibition devoted to the medium’s role in shaping how 19th-century France was seen and understood.
The exhibition will be presented in the museum’s Photography Gallery and will be free to visitors. It includes works by Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Eugène Cuvelier, Charles Marville, Louis-Émile Durandelle and Eugène Atget, among others. VMFA describes the presentation as an examination of photography’s contribution to the visual and cultural identity of a rapidly changing France, rather than simply a record of the period.
The show focuses on the decades surrounding the rise of Impressionism, when painters were challenging academic conventions through new approaches to light, color and subject matter. Photography was undergoing its own transformation. Publicly announced in Paris in 1839, the technology developed quickly over the following decades, allowing photographers to work more freely outdoors while producing images marked by clarity and detail.
Among the works identified for the exhibition is ‘View towards the Pont du Carrousel and the Quai du Louvre, Paris,’ made around 1855 by Frédéric Martens, a French photographer born in Germany. The albumen print entered the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection as a 2026 gift from Joy of Giving Something, Inc. The image places the changing urban environment of Paris within the exhibition’s broader account of photography’s ability to define visual experience.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Sarah Kennel, VMFA’s Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center. The museum’s fall program also includes ‘The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art,’ opening November 14, 2026, but the photography exhibition is a separate presentation drawn from VMFA’s own holdings.
‘French Photography in the Age of Impressionism’ opens November 21, 2026, in the Photography Gallery at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 200 N Arthur Ashe Boulevard, Richmond. The museum lists the exhibition as free admission and has not published a closing date.
