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T wo intensely watched, never-to-be-repeated exhibitions touch down in Texas this month, both opening the same day: Sunday, October 16. One unveils at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: a retrospective for Degas (1834–1917) — the psychological master of the Impressionists — organized by the foremost living scholars of the painter, MFAH director Gary Tinterow and former Louvre director Henri Loyrette. They and the late Canadian curator Jean Sutherland Boggs rewrote the book on Degas when they organized the 1988 exhibition that established the canon on the painter while for the first time presenting a full chronology of the artist's oeuvre. Thirty years later, building on fresh study from a generation of art historians, "Degas: A New Vision," arrives at the MFAH. Co-organized with the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, where the exhibition began its tour this summer. Houston is the only American venue for a show that may not be seen again in our lifetime. Approximately 200 works, culled from public and private collections worldwide, present the Impressionist across all media: painting, drawing (including those glorious pastels), printmaking, sculpture, and a cache of more than 20 of his surviving photographs. The penetrating portrait of his sister and brother-in-law, the Morbillis (circa 1865), as well as complex figure arrangements that reveal the simultaneity of modern life — A Cotton Market in New Orleans (1873), painted during a visit to his mother's family — underscore the complexity and psychological depths plumbed by Degas. I n contrast, Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum examines an art-historical wormhole via one of the most famous Impressionists: Monet (1840–1926). Sixty works loaned from public collections in the U.S., Europe, and Japan put a lens to a period that has never been studied until now. The Kimbell's deputy director, George T. M. Shackelford, curates "Monet: The Early Years," co-or- ganized by the Kimbell and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where it travels next February to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Shackelford says that a touchstone canvas in the Kimbell's collection was the catalyst for a fresh look at Monet: Pointe de la Hève at Low Time (1865), the first painting the artist submitted to the imprimatur of French painting, the Salon, in 1865. "The Early Years" spans works from the previous decade, begin- ning in 1858 when the painter was 17 and concludes in 1872, when the 31-year-old Monet had settled in Argenteuil on the River Seine near Paris and turned his full focus to water and sky, birthing a movement that a critic labeled in 1874 — Impressionism. Watch for cameos by Monet's wife, Camille, and infant son, Jean. Another highlight is Luncheon on the Grass (1866), cut down from an epic 13-by- 18 foot masterpiece, one of the riches on loan from Musée d'Orsay, Paris. "The Early Monet" illuminates the artist's dueling approaches to painting during the first decades of his career, from the lyric still lifes typified by Bouquet of Flowers (1869) to the more broadly painted On the Banks of the Seine, Bennecourt (1868). "Monet: The Early Years," October 16 through January 29, at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; kimbellart.org "Degas: A New Vision," October 16 through January 16, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; mfah.org Degas' Edmondo and Thérèse Morbilli, circa 1865, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston DEGAS MONET MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON. PHOTO © MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON. VS. Claude Monet's On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, 1868, at the Kimbell Art Museum THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO. PHOTO SCALA / WHITE IMAGES / ART RESOURCE, NYC. 48