By the time great paintings become posters, the bloom is long off the rose. With students back in college across the country, dorm rooms must be awash in the gauzy resplendence of Monet’s water lilies, Degas’ dancers and Pissarro’s peasants.

With its new exhibit, "The German Impressionists," the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston attempts to refresh the cynical viewer’s eye and expand our sense of the legacy of French Impressionism.

If you do a double-take when you hear “German” Impressionism, you’re not alone. Most are much more familiar with other aspects of German art. With this in mind, Helga Aurisch, MFAH curator of European art, spent the last five years assembling the first major American show on the subject. In fact, nearly all of the works come from Cologne, Berlin, Los Angeles and St. Louis.

MFAH owns just one Max Liebermann work, which seems surprising in a state like Texas, for which German immigration was so important. "The German Impressionists," in fact, packs the one-two punch of a large show of "German Impressionist Landscape Painting" and a smaller show, "Drawing From Nature," composed of prints and drawings.

Both are running now through Dec. 5 and focus on the works of Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt.

Aurisch deftly and elegantly guides viewers through "Landscape Painting." Pale green halls make for maximum visibility of these generous landscapes. A small, introductory chamber uses a few works to illustrate in how these painters will slide from realism into Impressionism. Following two large halls full of landscapes, three smaller rooms focus on each of the artists, including footage of the artists at work that reveals much about their technique. And the final room, concerned with late style, is an intelligent addition. There’s often nothing more interesting than what an artist becomes in the approach of death.

It’s hard not to appreciate the attention and architecture of Liebermann, who preferred country houses and beer gardens to the wild woody scenes of Corinth or Slevogt. Liebermann’s 1901 Country House in Hilversum perfectly illustrates the artist’s meditative poise and prefigures his turn, in later works, to an increasingly geometric interest in manicured gardens. But there are plenty of surprises hidden in these deceptively placid works as they become increasingly impressionistic.

Take his 1916 Garden Restaurant on the Havel—Nikolskoe. Everything seems calm as the patrons look out on the river. But hints of the disruptions of World War I abound: A single soldier perches on the edge of the scene and tables, inexplicably missing legs, float in air.

After the gorgeous order of Liebermann’s canvases, the forceful, chaotic, near-Fauvist world of Corinth invigorates. Sure, Corinth paid his dues with Alpine terraces and valley landscapes, but to me his most exciting works are odd city scenes. Take his 1922 Berlin, Under the Larches, which looks out from the upper level of a restaurant and up an avenue to the Brandenburg Gate. All the wild energy of the urban seems invested in the sprawling trees and the skewed perspective.

Although Corinth preferred to view things from above in his paintings, it still feels as if the city is so vital it might engulf the viewer. Corinth’s Building Under Construction in Monte Carlo, manages to make constriction compelling as a tree seems to burst up and out of the wreckage of the site.

To me, Slevogt was the most intriguing and lyrical in spite of the sometimes coarse brushstrokes. Sailboats on the Alster River charms and invites because it captures the bold motion of water even at the expense of the sailboats in the river or the people on the dock. Similarly, Harness Racing makes a gorgeous study of the energy of action. The more still the horses, the more legible they are. Those stretching around the track have already disappeared into speed.

Slevogt’s works also stood out boldly in Drawn by Nature. The show features fascinating sketches, etchings, and lithographs by all three artists. But Slevogt’s illustrations to the German translations of James Fenimore Cooper offer a window into German interest in the wildness of the American landscape, which features in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales of Native Americans and in contemporary German fascination with Westerns. Drawn by Nature also features Slevogt’s lovely watercolors.

His 1914 Sphinx in Giza and Sunset on the Nile, prove that an Impressionist needn’t retreat to a country home, like Liebermann, to produce great work.

A cynical viewer of "The German Impressionists" might ask if it’s worth so much time, energy and money to feature work that is neither the greatest Impressionist art, which tends to be French, nor the greatest German art. But the show makes elegantly appealing what might otherwise seem merely pedantic, and "The German Impressionists" will reward patient viewing with a worthwhile if not life-changing experience.