Shining New Light

Most art exhibitions focus on a single artist or maybe a few from the same school. Much more gratifying is "Turner, Whistler, Monet: Impressionist Visions," which runs at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, until Sept. 11, then moves on to Paris' Musée d'Orsay in October and London's Tate Britain next February. This is a show designed to draw out the affinities among three distinctive figures: the powerfully original British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner; the difficult, dandyish American expatriate James McNeill Whistler; and the quintessential French Impressionist Claude Monet. If this is a thesis show, and it is, there's nothing...