Sous la pluie : peindre, vivre et rêver

Exhibition at the Nantes Museum of Art, 7 November 2025 – 1 March 2026
at the Rouen Museum of Fine Arts, 11 April – 20 September 2026

Rain transforms the landscape. It veils the light, blurs the boundaries between earth and sky, and permeates the air and the ground. When it falls on the ‘modern’ city of the second half of the 19th century, it does not dampen the bustle of its boulevards. From the turn of the 20th century through to the 1930s, painters and photographers embraced the theme of the city in the rain, capturing a sense of both metamorphosis and enchantment.

This exhibition catalogue begins with the emergence of the motif in the 19th century and the challenge of painting the ephemeral, as seen in Turner’s skies or Hiroshige’s prints, before examining the metamorphosis of the modern city and the appearance of the umbrella in the works of Caillebotte and Pissarro. It then explores the melancholy of damp atmospheres immortalised by humanist photographers such as Brassaï, Willy Ronis and André Kertész, concluding with a contemporary reflection on climate change through the installations of Julius von Bismarck, Patrick Tosani and Zimoun.

At the intersection of art history and social history, meteorological science and physics, the book brings together the perspectives of art historians, a historian of meteorological science, a physicist, a writer and a film scholar.