The French are a highly civilised nation and have tried to
maintain standards in literature and art through their various academies and
institutes. Inevitably their rules and guidance are sometimes defied by groups
dedicated to a new vision and to new techniques. These rebels may come to terms
with the cultural establishment but, more likely, public taste eventually moves
in their direction. Just such a rebel was Claude
Monet (1840-1926) one of the founders of Impressionism, rejected in the
1870s, but latterly considered the finest painter in France and he died the
pride of his country.
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| A young Monet by Renoir (1875) |
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| Monet in his 1880s prime |
Born in Paris, the son of a well-to-do grocer and his
artistic wife, Monet’s family moved to Le Havre in Normandy in his childhood.
His mother died when he was 12 and he was cared for by a widowed aunt. Claude showed an early talent for drawing and
decided, to his father’s acute disappointment, that he would study art instead
of entering commerce. He duly enrolled in 1859 in the Académie
Suisse in Paris where he meets Pissarro. After a short period of military
service in Algeria, Monet was invalided out and from 1862 was working under
Glyre and Eugène Boudin (who became his mentor) and with young artists
like Bazille, Sisley and Renoir.
French conventional salon painting was still in thrall to
the Romantic tradition of Delacroix and the Neo-Classicism of Ingres with
historical, mythological and Oriental subjects being particularly valued. Monet
and his circle were deeply interested in the composition of colour, the
contrasts of light and the joys of landscape painting en plein air. They admired the realist Courbet but they were keen
to experiment much further. Accordingly, Monet and his circle produced works
using short brush-strokes, eschewing excessive detail and displaying bright
colours without smooth finish, creating atmosphere and light effects.
These works were submitted to the annual Salon hangings
sponsored by the Académie des Beaux Arts, but they were increasingly rejected by
this prestigious but conservative institution. In despair the young artists
organised their own Paris exhibition and in 1873 the first of 8 annual
exhibitions opened in a studio on the Rue des Ecoles. An early Monet work
caused a critic to coin the term “Impressionism” an uncomplimentary dig at the
allegedly unfinished nature of the painting – but the term stuck.
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| Women in the Garden (1867) |
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| Women with a Parasol (1873) |
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| Monet's seminal painting - Impression, Rising Sun (1873) |
The Impressionist circle had fluctuating membership as one
rule was that they did not exhibit at the Salon, which still enjoyed high
prestige. Influential Edouard Manet, rather older than the others, never
joined, Bazille had died in action in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, but
Monet principally carried the torch (though he too exhibited for 2 years at the
Salon). He was joined fitfully by, in retrospect, the illustrious Pissarro,
Sisley, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne and the leading woman, Berthe Morisot. The style
became immensely influential in art, music and even literature.
Monet began to prosper in the 1880s as dealers became
interested in his work. In an 1870 stay in London he came to admire Constable
and, above all, Turner and he produced canvasses of the Thames and the Houses
of Parliament. He wanted later to assert his modernity and not be typecast as a
landscape painter and we see bustling city scenes and railway stations.
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| Houses of Parliamenr, London |
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| Gare St-Lazare, Paris |
Monet was an enormously prolific painter and by the 1890s
rich collectors were flocking to buy his works. He would reproduce the same
subject from different angles or at different times of the day. Thus, there is
a series of studies of Rouen Cathedral and of simple Haystacks, among others.
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| Rouen Cathedral |
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| End of the Summer |
Monet’s personal life was complicated. He had married his
beautiful and romantic model Camille Doncieux in 1870 and they had 2 children,
but she died of cancer in 1879. Monet then took up with Alice Hoschedé,
the wife of Ernest Hoschedé, a wealthy department store director, art lover and a patron
of the impressionists since 1873. Alice had 6 children with Ernest but in 1878
disaster struck when Ernest was forced into bankruptcy. Monet helped out and
the Hoschedé
family and the Monets lived together harmoniously in various lodgings near
Paris or in Normandy. Ruined Ernest took a job on a newspaper in Paris and
became more detached from Alice, who nevertheless observed the proprieties,
never acknowledging she was Monet’s mistress.
Ernest died in 1891 and Monet and Alice quietly married in
1892. Later, Monet’s eldest son Jean married Alice’s second daughter Blanche,
who became an artist, was widowed in 1914 and tended Monet in his old age. Alice’s
third daughter Suzanne married the American artist Theodore Butler in 1892, but
when Suzanne died in 1899, Butler married Alice’s first daughter Marthe. This
peculiar extended family lived together at Monet’s new house at Giverny,
Normandy, bought in 1890, with Monet a reluctant, grumpy but loving paterfamilias of this ménage
with Alice running the house efficiently aided by a growing army of servants a
and gardeners.
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| Monet at his garden and house and Giverny |
Monet loved his two gardens at Giverny – the front Clos
Normand densely planted with every possible flourishing bloom displaying
vibrant colours and the second water garden, famous for its water lilies and
delectable bridges. His life was agreeable; he became an expert on plants and
gardening, he adorned the house with his collection of paintings honouring old
friends and he built up an enviable selection of Japanese prints, moved by
their restrained delicacy. He still loved to travel and he treated himself to a
splendid Panhard motor car, making long journeys through France.
He cultivated his friendships, especially with Georges
Clemenceau (Le Tigre) whom he had met as a poor medical student in 1860s Paris.
Politics did not attract Monet (he never voted) but the basis of their
friendship was recollection of earlier times, a shared love of art and an
enthusiasm for Japanese prints. Clemenceau also was developing a garden in
Brittany and he came to rely on Monet for help and guidance. Party politics
apart Clemenceau and Monet were united in their general radicalism, their
atheism, their feelings for justice in the age of Dreyfus, and their love for
the soil of France.
The years were crowding in; Alice died of leukaemia in 1911,
a devastating blow which almost made Monet retire from painting. His sharp
eyesight was endangered by the onset of cataracts, which were temporarily
patched up. With the encouragement of friends Monet returned to painting and
embarked in 1914 on his famous series of 250 studies of “Water-lilies”, which he had first
painted in the 1890s. The Great War raged all about him but he was able to
concentrate on his painting.
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| Water Lilies |
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| Water Lilies again |
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| Clemenceau and Monet |
In 1918, almost the first act of Clemenceau after the
Armistice was to visit Monet and secure the gift of the Water Lilies series for the French nation. An extension to
L’Orangerie gallery was commissioned to receive the paintings, which emphasised
the beauty of Nature and perhaps the fleetingness of Life – but there are
endless abstractions possible. Monet at last died in 1926, appropriately in the
arms of his friend Clemenceau. He had lived a full, vivid life and had lit up his
world with his genius.
When the Water Lilies
were unveiled, Clemenceau was dismayed by their mixed critical reception. Only
in the 1950s were the paintings “rediscovered” and their iconic status
established. All art goes through phases of favour and obscurity but ultimately
true quality shines through.
SMD
26.06.18
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018
