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The twenty-two works in this exhibition from the collection of the Musée Marmottan, Paris, are eloquent examples of Monet' s late works and provide a unique chronicle of the last decades of his life. Monet' s final years were spent at Giverny, his home from 1883 until his death in 1926; there he perfected a visionary art that would herald the advent of modern abstraction. Monet's final works centered on the theme of water lilies, on the subtle effects of the sun's passage, and on the variations of light and atmosphere over a period of hours or seasons. This subject gradually became Monet's focus for achieving his lifelong aim: to capture the fleeting, momentary aspects of nature.
It was at Giverny that Monet began his celebrated method of producing works in series: Grainstacks, Poplars, and Cathedrals. Monet also pursued his treatment of subjects viewed at different seasons and periods of the day with Japanese Bridges and Wisteria.
The variations on a theme in the magnificent Water-Lily murals were his crowning achievement. In all of these, it is the changes in light and shadow, more than the landscape itself, that are the subject. "The subject is secondary," Monet affirmed. "What I want to reproduce is what lies between the subject and myself." At the beginning of World War I, Monet conceived the idea of the cycle of water-lily murals, works now in the collection Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris. This project, which spanned the last years of Monet's life, is one of his greatest legacies. In these large panels, as well as in the smaller, more intimate studies, the subject tends to disappear, giving way to modulations of color. Monet labored relentlessly despite the fact that his sight, increasingly blurred by cataracts, slowed down his work. He refined these canvases, which are much more than direct transcriptions of the movements of water and the effects of light. In the water-lily painting of 1916-17, for example, Monet combines a strict economy of theme with swift agitated brush strokes, allowing the canvas to show through the sumptuous, predominantly blue background, thus giving it great visual importance.
The yellow and purple irises of 1924-25 convey a feeling of urgency through elusive sensations and transient colors. The incisive harmony of greens in the center of the painting is broken by patches of radiant yellow. The azure blue of the water and of the reflected sky is swept by white foam and sinuous wisps of violet. With this same freedom of expression, in a unique synthesis of the artist's preoccupations at Giverny, the late paintings incorporate all the elements of Monet's environment: the house, the garden, and the Japanese footbridge.
In the water lily paintings, the absence of all references to the pond's perimeter, the swirling brush strokes, and the unfinished edges of the canvas served to reinforce Monet's affiliation with modernity. His vertical interpretation of the horizontal surface of the water contributed to the demise of traditional modes of representation. What emerges in these works is a new tension between surface and depth of perspective. Sometimes the natural surroundings are conveyed only through reflections, while figurative elements break down into flickering spots of pigment. Within Monet's fluid compositions, our gaze tends to glide over the surface, savoring the paint itself, sensing the water and the vegetation rendered in broad, luxuriant strokes. In a desire to make nature his main source of inspiration, Monet paradoxically broke through into the realm of abstraction.
The greatest painter of his time, Monet is also a precursor of Abstract Expressionism, a major movement in 20th-century art.
Exhibition Information | Biography | Gardens | Latework | Bibliography