“Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia,” which opened last week at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, aims to compare masterpieces by the three painters in the context of the Arcadian theme as handled by a wide range of artists.

“The dream of Arcadia, a mythic place of beauty and repose where humankind lives in harmony with nature, has held an enduring appeal for artists since antiquity,” says the museum. “With its promise of calm, simplicity, and order, it has served as both an inspiration—the sought for, but never fulfilled ideal of a paradise here on earth—and as an image of refuge, a place that is distant and seemingly protected from the vicissitudes of life. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time of sweeping and often disruptive social, technological, and intellectual change, this dream found a powerful new currency and once again spurred the imagination of a new generation of painters—many of whom played key roles in the development of modern art.

“The renewed interest in the theme of Arcadia in the early decades of the 20th century was motivated in part by the desire that all artists feel to measure themselves against the great accomplishments of the past—Cézanne once said famously that he wished to ‘redo Poussin after nature’—as well as by the fascination with a subject that has a universal appeal. Moving beyond the classical treatment of Arcadia that had long dominated European painting, the avant-garde interpreted it in new and very different ways.”

“Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia” runs through September 3 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, 215-763-8100, philamuseum.org.

Franklin Einspruch is the art critic for The New York Sun. He blogs at Artblog.net.