Monet and Venice is the first major international loan exhibition devoted to Claude Monet’s luminous paintings of Venice, traditionally known as La Serenissima. The artist only visited the city once, but his more that 20 Venetian paintings are some of his most important paintings. This is the first exhibition dedicated to Monet’s Venetian paintings since their debut in Paris over a century ago.
Late period masterpieces
Monet was 68 years old in October 1908 when he and his second wife, Alice, made their one and only trip to Venice. He intended to stay only a few weeks, but when he began painting the city’s expansive visual experience of architecture, water, light, and reflection, the weeks extended to two months.
Every painting Monet composed in Venice included some combination of sky, water, and architecture while many were painted directly from a position in a gondola on the water, harkening back to his early days when he painted from a “studio boat” on the Seine. During Monet’s later years, he developed an increasingly vibrant abstract style. His broader, looser applications of paint were in some ways a result of his increasingly eroding eyesight due to cataracts. Far from a setback, Monet’s later period paintings are some of his most lustrous examples of the play of light and shadow. During the years before visiting Venice, Monet had been concentrating on his garden in Giverny, France and the elusive nature of the water lily pond’s surface. In a moment of frustration he canceled a planned 1907 exhibition of his Water Lilies. This dissatisfaction inspired the idea for Monet and his wife to visit Venice for a restorative holiday.
Painting Venice
The exhibition is arranged chronologically and thematically along two interrelated paths: Monet’s career and depictions of Venice by his predecessors and contemporaries. The allure of the city is illustrated with shimmering canals by Sargent, humble doorways by Whistler, and atmospheric watercolors by Turner. Paintings, watercolors, and prints from the 18th through the early 20th century give the museumgoer a perspective on creativity in a specific time and place, helping to understand the context of Monet’s work. A collection of more than a dozen paintings trace Monet’s fascination with water, reflections, and the atmospheric envelope along the Seine, on the Normandy Coast, in London, and his water lily pond at Giverny. Monet’s Venice paintings are on view together in a penultimate gallery where they are grouped by motifs reminiscent of their display in the artist’s 1912 exhibition where they were first presented.
Perspectives of the Grand Canal
Venice, the Grand Canal looking East with Santa Maria della Salute from 1749–50 is a prime example of Venetian painter Canaletto’s precise and monumental representation of architecture in paint. John Singer Sargent’s Santa Maria della Salute from 1904, its looser brush strokes far removed from the hyperrealism of Canaletto, still describes the essential form of the structure. Fortunately, in this exhibition, two of Monet’s Grand Canal, Venice paintings will appear together. Unique to this exhibition will be the reunion of all four Venetian paintings that were previously owned by Gwendolyn and Margaret Davies. One of these, Monet’s Grand Canal, Venice, was sold then given by Osgood Hooker to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Dashes of blue, pink, and green brushstrokes become the dreamlike moving waves of the canal and the soft pink of the Basilica. The second Grand Canal, Venice is on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This picture exemplifies Monet’s gift of capturing light refracted off of the water while the Basilica, appearing like a weightless apparition, floats between blue shadows.
“Monet once remarked that he found Venice “too beautiful to be painted,’ and it is perhaps this very beauty, and the city’s fame, that has obscured the significance and daring nature of his paintings of Venice,” said Melissa E. Burton director of collections and chief curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, exhibition co-curator, and former director of curatorial affairs of the Fine Arts Museums. “His Venetian paintings are among the most luminous and poetic of his career, yet they are often overshadowed by his depictions of the French landscape, as well as by his late works that are linked to the rise of 20th-century abstraction. His time in Venice was a critical period of creative renewal that has not previously been explored in-depth before this exhibition.”
Monet and Venice is on view through July 26. Visit the website for timed entry reservations.