Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night over the Rhone at Arles, 1888 Musee D’Orsay

The Art Gallery of Ontario is partnering with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris on an exhibition of paintings from such masters as Gauguin and van Gogh, Americans Georgia O’Keeffe and Whistler and Canadian Emily Carr.

Mystical Landscapes will include close to 90 paintings and 20 works on paper by 36 artists from 15 countries.

The exhibition opens here at the AGO on Oct. 22 and run till Jan. 29, 2017 before opening at Musee d’Orsay in spring 2017.

“These masterpieces convey experiences that cannot be put into words,” curator Katharine Lochnan said in a news release.

“The feeling of connecting with a deeper reality, a power much greater than ourselves, is a mystical experience. These experiences may reach any of us through the contemplation of nature and the cosmos. We are moved by the beauty of sunrise and sunset, the stars in the night sky, the reflections of the moon on lakes, the power of the ocean waves and the vision of snow-capped mountains.

“These paintings convey the artists’ mystical experiences of something greater than themselves. It is primarily through the contemplation of nature that they have seen with greater clarity.”

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night over the Rhone at Arles from 1888, which prompted him to write about feeling “a tremendous need of —shall I say the word—religion…so I go outside at night to paint the stars”;
• Paul Gauguin’s vividVision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) from 1888, painted during his sojourn in rural Brittany;
• Claude Monet’sWater Lilies (Nymphéas) from 1907, which he painted after hours of Zen-like meditation beside his Japanese water garden;
• Edvard Munch’s The Sun, created to inspire students in the wake of his well-publicized nervous breakdown between 1910-1913;
• Georgia O’Keeffe’s Series I – from the Plainsfrom 1919, showing the terrifying power of an approaching thunderstorm in Texas;
• A series of mystical lithographs by the recently rediscovered French artist Charles-Marie Dulac, which illustrates St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Creation

It’s shaping up to be an exciting Fall. We’ll keep you posted on the blog!