The Wildenstein Plattner Institute just announced that Claude Monet’s 110 pastels are now catalogued on line. Less known than the oil paintings, they are of stunning beauty. The website offers also insights, informations and commentary by Geraldine Lefebvre, that can easily be translated to any language. Enjoy !
Claude Monet, Meule (Grainstack) 1891, private collection
This very colorful sunset at Giverny behind a grainstack has just sold at auction for 81.4 million dollars, setting a new record for a work by Claude Monet.
For this sale Christie’s has published a very interesting booklet that you can read on line here. It details the making of the work and its significance in art history. You will also read why it is not a haystack!
Here is a not so famous painting by Monet that was on display in a recent exhibit at the Musee de Louviers, not far from Giverny. This oil on canvas is privately owned.
The title is “Blanche Painting with her Sister Suzanne on the Water Side”. It was painted in 1887 by Claude Monet.
Blanche was the daughter of Monet’s second wife Alice. She became his daughter-in-law by marrying Jean Monet, the painter’s eldest son.
Blanche was a talented artist. She often painted the same landscapes as Monet, in her own impressionist style, sometimes very similar to the style of the master.
Her sister Suzanne appears on numerous canvases, because she was a pretty young woman. Monet had her posing for his two attempts of a figure in open-air, aka as the girl with a parasol. (Musee d’Orsay, Paris)
The biggest one faces visitors at the end of a perspective through several large rooms. It deserves this honor. This enormous canvas of Monet’s late period, painted during World War One, is certainly one of the most splendid masterpieces of the museum.
Monet focuses on two patches of water lilies floating on the pond in his garden at Giverny. Unlike many of the paintings in this series, this canvas is very bright. Vibrant reds and pinks pop out the flowers, contrasting with the soft greens of the lily pads and the pale blue of the reflected sky. Curiously enough, a cotton like cloud occupies the upper corner of the painting, when it should be reflected at the lower part of the canvas. It is one of Monet’s favorite game to mix all the landmarks to create confusion in the eyes of the viewer.
Claude Monet had calculated that the light changes every seven minutes in Giverny. I wonder if he didn’t exagerate a little bit, but he had an exceptional eye and he wanted to render the slightest light changes exactly.
Monet painted in series. He chose a spot he liked in his garden, a special framing of his pond, and he painted it over and over again.
That is to say he had several canvases on work, sometimes ten, sometimes up to twenty. He gave a few brushstrokes on one, then he noticed that the light was changing. He would look among the unfinished canvases to find the one corresponding to this very light effect. He put it on the easel, went on with it for a few minutes. Eventually the light would change again, and Monet accordingly changed the canvas on the easel. And so on.
It was a slow process: Monet had to wait until the same light effect would come back to complete the canvas. Impressionist painters don’t imagine nor remember, they paint what they can see, the impression of the moment.
It is a challenge to paint a moment, for it takes many hours of hard work to paint a landscape. With many canvases on work at the same time, it could last monthes or even years before all of them were considered finished.
Claude Monet made his garden famous by painting it over and over again. There are 272 canvases by Monet featuring his water garden, not to speak about the Grandes Decorations, these oversized panels that can be seen at l’Orangerie Museum in Paris.
Monet didn’t want any other motive for almost twenty years. He was in his seventies and eighties and didn’t feel like travelling for long painting campaigns anymore.
In addition there was war, the first World War from 1914 through 1918. Monet preferred to stay in his garden to paint. Here he found all the inspiration he needed.
Monet painted his pond or his bridge repeatedly, because for him there were never the same. What he wanted to render was not especially a flower or a bridge, but the light on them, the air that wraps them. And the light changes all the time.
When Claude Monet was 70 he conceived a crazy project: huge panels featuring his pond to be glued on the walls of a big oval room.
Somebody standing in the middle of this room would be surrounded by his relaxing work.
It took him ten years to achieve his aim. He had to build a new studio for these over-sized paintings, he became almost blind because of cataract, but he managed to paint 91meter long canvases (almost 300 feet long). They are two meter high, as high as Monet could paint when he stood. Two rooms were eventually necessary to accommodate them.
The Grandes Decorations can be seen in l’Orangerie Museum in Paris on the Place de la Concorde, opposite to Musée d’Orsay. They won’t travel ever, they cannot be dismounted. The museum has just been renovated for six years and these extremely valuable paintings didn’t move while the ceiling of their rooms were opened and transformed.
A last amazing detail about these amazing murals: Monet donated them to the French state to celebrate the victory of 1918. He donated a ten year work!