Lasting Impressions.

Byline: BOB KEEFER The Register-Guard

IT'S A LONG, long way from Paris to Portland, and not just in terms of frequent flier miles.

So who would have thought that so many interesting French artworks would turn up owned in private collections here, half a world away?

Just how many people do you know with their own Monet canvas, or Toulouse-Lautrec poster, or Degas pastel hanging in the dining room?

"Paris to Portland: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masters in Portland Collections," which just opened at the Portland Art Museum, contains 165 works of French art, from oil paintings, prints and drawings to sculpture and photography. And most of them - about two-thirds - are borrowed from a handful of private collectors in Portland.

So this is a show of original French art put together by a Portland museum without ever leaving town. The surprise is, given the way the art was assembled, that it's not only interesting but even somewhat coherent.

Walk into the first of two large museum galleries that hold the show and you encounter "Nature's Fan," an astonishingly lush 1881 canvas by William Adolphe Bouguereau - not an Impressionist by any means, but the kind of carefully trained realist painter that the French Academy supported at the end of the 19th century and against which the Impressionists rebelled.

Academic painting has gotten a bad rap lately, if Bouguereau's large painting is any indication. His candidly romantic scene of a young woman fanning a fat, curly haired baby lying in a forest glen may be a little treacly for our emotional tastes.

But it's so perfectly executed, from its classic composition to the artist's unerring command of drawing, color and brushwork, that it meets the eye like a first look at high-definition television. You have never seen such opulent flesh as Bouguereau can paint.

Enter the gallery and you encounter the real show: a scattered medley of canvases and a few sculptures by big artistic names we all recognize: Claude Monet and his waterlilies. Henri Matisse. Paul Cezanne. Mary Cassatt. Edgar Degas. Even a bronze by Pablo Picasso.

Though the artists' names are world class, you'll find few blockbuster works here. This is Portland, after all, not New York or Paris. But given the riches of the period, midlist paintings of the kind that made their way West are pretty darned good.

And even if a little voice occasionally whispers, "Yet another Impressionist show? What next? More gold from Egyptian tombs?" the art is worth going to see.

Among them, especially, find canvases by Camille Pissarro, the daddy of Impressionism; an oil portrait by Degas; two paintings by Berthe Morisot; and three by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, whose fantastic rich nudes and portraits betray his roots as a porcelain painter.

Perhaps the most wonderful piece in the show is a simple landscape painting by Alfred Sisley, "Lisiere de la foret au printemps" (Edge of the Forest in the Springtime), borrowed from an unnamed private collector. Sisley takes a mundane and even boring outdoor scene and transforms it by his deft use of color and, especially, the interjection of a foreground tree limb that practically rakes the viewer's eyes (this is one I could see hanging in my own dining room).

Like the museum's own collection, the show is weaker in post-Impressionist offerings. There is, for example, exactly one oil painting in all of Portland by Paul Gauguin. Loaned to the museum by an anonymous private collector, the 1884 "Paysage a Rouen" is from the artist's early days in Brittany, not the Tahitian work for which he became famous.

Likewise, the show includes but a single Cezanne, and again an early work. "Paris: Quai de Bercy - La halle aux vins" is an odd, dark cityscape done by the artist at a bleak moment in his life; it's quite a contrast to the refreshing landscapes that he would create later on.

On the second floor of the exhibit, you escape the sometimes- ponderous world of painting in favor of lighter, more ephemeral fare, from a single collector's set of large Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec posters - you've probably seen most of these images, but they're a good deal more impressive at full kiosk size - to drawings, prints and photographs.

Here, for example, you'll find a page of Monet sketches, a little Gauguin wood cut, a small etching by Degas for which Mary Cassatt posed at the Louvre. Interspersed are photographs by Jacques-Henri Lartigue, whose youthful eye captured scenes of French daily life at the beginning of the 20th century.

The existence of such a show reflects the vision and drive of Portland Art Museum Director John Buchanan, who has made it a mission during his eight years here to work with serious art collectors in the community and even mentor them in their purchases.

Some of the work in "Paris to Portland" was already in town before Buchanan arrived here, but much has been acquired by private collectors under his guidance.

"For a museum director," he explained during a gallery tour, "the acquisition of collectors is as important as the acquisition of dollars or works of art.

"At the end of the day, what it's all about is access to great works of art."

In other words, part of Buchanan's job is to guide collectors who have the money toward purchasing art works that might look good one day at the museum.

"I won't be coy about saying that what we hope is that people will think of giving," he said.

Right now, he said, he is working with about half a dozen Portland art collectors "in a serious fashion" and another half dozen less intensively.

With the unrelenting popularity of Impressionist art, the movement's best works have skyrocketed in value during the past 20 years. Buchanan adds, though, that midrange works remain relatively accessible.

As the museum director toured the gallery, he mused on the financial pressure that this has placed on both museums and collectors.

He pointed to a pastel of Paris dancers by Jean-Louis Forain.

"If this pastel were by Degas, it would be worth, I don't know, $3 million to $8 million. But instead, it's by an artist who, though he worked alongside Degas, didn't have the same press agentry. So, it's, 'and here he smiled - not.' '

And will the world's taste for Impressionism ever be sated?

"Never," Buchanan said.

Features reporter Bob Keefer can be reached by phone at 338-2325 and by e-mail at [e-mail].

PARIS TO PORTLAND

WHAT: A show of 165 works of French art by Impressionist and post-Impressionist masters mostly borrowed from private collectors in Portland.

WHEN: Through March 23. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

WHERE: Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.

HOW MUCH: Admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and students and $6 for ages 5 to 18.

CAPTION(S):

Among the works at the Portland Art Museum are a color lithograph by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (left) and an oil on canvas by Emile Bernard, "Portrait de Madeleine Bernard," (above). Top: "Shepherdess Leaning on a Tree" is by Camille Pissarro. Above: "Young Girls Reading" is by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. "Paysage a Rouen," an oil on canvas, is the only painting by Paul Gauguin in the show.