AN exhibition featuring important paintings from across the globe opens at a County Durham museum this month.

The Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, is featuring paintings loaned from museums in Britain, France and America, in its forthcoming Boudin, Monet and the Sea Painters of Normandy exhibition.

The exhibition explores the relationship between Eugne Boudin (1824-1898) and Claude-Oscar Monet (1840-1926) and their interaction with other painters working in Normandy during the Nineteenth Century.

Amy Barker, curator of the exhibition, said: "This is a truly delightful period in French Nineteenth Century art. Painters such as Boudin and Monet strove to capture the essence of coastal life, both nature and society.

"The exhibition includes loans from museums such as the National Gallery, London, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York."

Boudin, recognised as an important precursor of the Impressionist movement, discovered the young Monet working as a caricaturist in 1858. Their friendship and relationships with other artists, such as Gustave Courbet, was to prove fundamental to Monet's artistic development.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a display of Nineteenth Century summer dress.

The exhibition opens on Saturday, May 29, and runs until Monday, August 30.

For details and a free programme call (01833) 690606.

Published: 10/05/2004