Channel Crossings is a new display featuring English and French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism from Manchester Art Gallery's collection. It opens on 6 December.

Channel Crossings replaces a display of work by Lowry and Valette, which will be closed to the public from 27 November 2012.  

This display will look at the allure and excitement of French art for a generation of English and Scottish painters emerging from the claustrophobia of late Victorian painting.

Pissarro - Rue de VoisinsPissarro - Rue de VoisinsIt will show works by major French artists including Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir alongside British artists such as George Clausen, John Singer Sargent and Philip Wilson Steer. 

Channel Crossings replaces a display of work by Lowry and Valette, which will be closed to the public from 27 November 2012.  

Eight of the works by Lowry, including works newly restored, will be displayed on the first floor and ground floor of the art gallery from 6 December 2012.

Adolphe Valette’s Albert Square will also be displayed on the ground floor.

India HouseIndia HouseConfidential thinks it's a shame that India House is not the chosen work to be displayed from Valette as it sums up the way the artist dissolved the physical into the ethereal. In fact Confidential would rather have eight works on display and just the one of the dreary Lowry - Valette's pupil.

That aside, this tactic of the Art Gallery is part of an ongoing programme to make more of the gallery's collection available to the public through more frequent changes and rotation of works.