Fleeting Beauty in European and Asian Art

Beauty surfaces for a moment and then it vanishes.

Across eras, continents, and media, artists were drawn to transient conditions – light, atmosphere, and season. French Barbizon School painters of the mid-19th century abandoned academic idealization in favor of direct observation, studying natural effects in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Working alongside them, Fontainebleau photographers explored soft focus, tonal effects, and the photographic process. Inspired by these painterly photographs, the early 20th-century Pictorialists evoked memory and mood – transcendent encounters with nature.

French Impressionist artists pushed Barbizon School investigations further. Painting outdoors, without preparatory studies, they observed that color is continuously altered by atmospheric conditions and reflections. Their rapid brushstrokes in complementary hues dissolve solid forms into optical vibration. Under their hand, reflective surfaces – rivers, harbors, expanses of sea – are transformed by light.

The fascination with the fleeting nature of time was already present in Chinese landscape painting of the Song dynasty (960–1279), where it was viewed through the broader ethical stance of striving to keep cosmic harmony between human beings and nature. Daoist philosophy (Dao meaning “the way” in Chinese) encouraged artists to explore the life force of constant renewal and change. By leaving large areas of their paintings empty, they achieved a balance between the invisible and formless on one hand and tangible form on the other. Thus, luminous views of mountains, sky, and water provide moments of contemplation and moral cultivation.

Another approach to transience is found in the Buddhist teachings of materiality and non-materiality, explored in Japanese art. In the Edo period (1603–1868), artists expressed the Japanese concept of mono no aware – meaning “the beauty of things passing” – in moments poised between appearance and disappearance. A boat drifting through mist, blossoms at the threshold of decay, a bird in flight. Artists evoked nature’s changing states, inviting us to contemplate the ebb and flow of time.

Culled from the Israel Museum’s rich collections, the works displayed here immortalize transitory moments. Contemporary artists continue to transform the act of looking into an awareness of temporality.

Egret Among Reeds

Japan, ca. 1600

Ink on paper

The Jacob Pins Collection in the Israel Museum

Taizan Hine, Japanese, 1813–1869

Landscape

Japan, mid-19th century

Ink on paper

The Jacob Pins Collection in the Israel Museum

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, French, 1796–1875

The Town of Avray, by the River, undated

Oil on canvas

Gift of Sam Weisbord, Los Angeles, to American Friends of the Israel Museum, in loving memory of his mother, Goldie Weisbord

Gustave Courbet, French, 1819–1877

Seascape, 1869

Oil on canvas

Gift of Marie Zetlin, New York, in memory of her husband, Michail Zetlin

Eugène Boudin, French, 1824–1898

Boat on Shore, undated

Oil on panel

The Sam Spiegel Collection, bequeathed to American Friends of the Israel Museum

Claude Monet

French, 1840–1926

The Cliff of Aval, Etrétat, 1885

Oil on canvas

65.5 x 91.7 cm

Bequest of Marie Dabek, Paris, to the State of Israel, in memory of Jack and Mimi Dabek. On permanent loan to The Israel Museum, Jerusalem from the Administrator General of the State of Israel

Lesser Ury, German, 1861–1931

Landscape, ca. 1900

Oil on canvas

Gift of Helgard and Irwin Field, California, to American Friends of the Israel Museum

Lesser Ury, German, 1861–1931

Potsdam Square by Night, mid-1920s

Oil on canvas

From the Jewish Museum, Berlin, via JRSO (Jewish Restitution Successor Organization)