Welcome back to The Deep Dive. When we think
of, well, the founding father of the entire Impressionist
movement, Claude Monet just springs to mind,
doesn't he? He really does. You picture those
dreamy scenes, maybe the hazy light on the Thames
or almost inevitably the water lilies at Giverny,
that kind of tranquil beauty. Iconic images.
But today we're aiming to go beyond those, you
know, almost serene pictures hanging on museum
walls. We want to dig into the demanding, often
quite tumultuous reality of the man who actually
created them. Yeah, we're looking at Oscar Claude
Monet, born 1840, died 1926. And he wasn't just
a painter. He was, in many ways, a revolutionary.
His discipline, his sheer stubborn vision, really
forced the art world to change its perspective.
Literally. That's the plan, then. Exactly. Our
mission here is to move past that surface -level
appreciation, you know, pretty pictures, and
really understand the technical struggle, the
financial chaos sometimes, and the personal tragedies
that fueled this nearly century -long quest he
was on. To capture those fleeting moments of
light. That really is the core of it, isn't it?
Monet was probably the most consistent, the most
prolific practitioner of Impressionism's main
idea. expressing your perception of nature mainly
through plain air painting. Painting outdoors.
He was just relentlessly dedicated to that immediacy.
Yeah. Capturing the moment. And here's where
the story gets, well, instantly ironic. The movement's
name, Impressionism, which is globally recognized
now. It wasn't a compliment originally. Not at
all. It came from his 1872 painting, Impression,
Sunrise Impression, Sol Levant. He showed it
in 1874 at the very first Impressionist exhibition.
Right. And this critic, Louis Leroy, he saw the
title and just seized on it. He used Impressionism
basically as an insult, suggesting the painting
was sloppy, unfinished even. But Monet and his
group. They basically took this derogatory label
and kind of wore it like a badge of honor. It
fit their rebellious stance. It really captures
that spirit right from the get -go. And that
rebelliousness, you can see it was kind of baked
into him from a young age. He was born in Paris,
but grew up in Le Havre. And his father was a
pretty successful merchant. Wholesale goods,
ship channeling, groceries. And he fully expected
Claude to take over the family business. That
was the plan. Stability. The bourgeois path.
Exactly. But Monet, he had other plans. He was
apparently a deeply apathetic student, hated
schoolwork, really. But he did have this undeniable
early talent for drawing. And thankfully, his
mother, who was a singer, she actually supported
his artistic ambitions. Which created this fundamental
tension right there in the family. the expected
stability of business versus the perceived chaos
and freedom of being an artist. So let's unpack
those formative years. And because Monet didn't
initially set out to be a serious landscape artist,
did he? No, not at all. Our sources show he was
actually doing quite well in his early teens,
like around 15, just making quick, witty caricatures,
portraits of local people. For money. So he had
a little business going. Yeah, he had a local
reputation for these sketches. But the real turning
point, the moment the, let's say, the future
great landscape artist was born, that came around
1858. He met Eugene Boudin. Ugh, Boudin. Key
figure. Absolutely key. Boudin introduced Monet
to this revolutionary idea at the time. Plan
air painting. Painting outdoors. Directly from
the subject. It sounds normal now. But back then.
It was radical. And it completely changed Monet's
life, didn't it? Totally. Monet later said, quite
emphatically apparently, that he owed everything
to Boudin, called him his master. And this wasn't
just about, you know, setting up an easel outside.
It was about absorbing the philosophy. Which
was? That the fleeting, changing effects of weather
and light, that was a real subject. Not just
the tree or the building, but the light on the
tree. Right. And that new passion drove him to
Paris in 1859. He tried the usual routes first,
though. Visited the official salon, tried to
get into Thomas Couture's famous studio. Yeah,
but Couture actually refused him. So he ended
up enrolling in the Académie Suisse instead.
That's where he met Camille Pissarro, another
future Impressionist giant. But the Académie
Suisse wasn't quite right either. Apparently
not serious enough for him. So later, he studied
at Charles Glair's studio. And this is where
he connects with three other huge names of the
movement. Pierre -Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley,
and Frederick Bazille. Bazille became his closest
friend. Okay, so he's finding his circle, but
Glair's studio didn't last long either. No, and
this is crucial for understanding his early defiance.
Monet left Gleyre's studio pretty quickly because
he just fundamentally disagreed with the way
they taught. Gleyre pushed for historical subjects,
highly finished, perfected studio work, very
classical. And Monet was already hooked on Bourdain's
spontaneity. Exactly. He was already searching
for a way to express something new, immediate,
rooted in modern life, not ancient history. So
he's barely started figuring this out, and then
boom, 1861, age 20. He gets conscripted. Seven
years in the army. Right. And his father offered
to buy him out, which was, you know, a thing
wealthy families could do. But there was a condition.
Let me guess. Give up art. Give up art entirely.
Join the family business. Monet refused. Flat
out. He enlisted instead. Wow. That's commitment.
Where did he end up serving? Algeria. Which turned
out to be, well, difficult. He got typhoid fever,
had to come back after only about a year. But
his time in North Africa. short as it was, had
this really powerful effect on him. How so? The
light, the colors. He talked about the intensity,
the vivid, saturated colors there. He later said
that North Africa contained the gem of my future
researches. It was a revelation. You can almost
see that thread leading to his later work, right?
The Mediterranean paintings, the Venice series,
that intensity of light he found there. Definitely.
It showed him possibilities beyond the grayer
light of northern. France. Anyway, his wealthy
aunt eventually paid for his release from the
army, and once he was out, he just threw himself
back into painting. Trying ambitious things early
on, like women in the garden and that huge Le
Déjeuner sur l 'herbe. Yes, Le Déjeuner, the
luncheon on the grass, which he actually never
finished, interestingly. But it's seen as maybe
the most important painting of his early period.
It shows him grappling with these big problems,
like how to paint figures convincingly in natural
outdoor light in a modern setting. And he did
get some early recognition at the official salon.
He did, yeah. He debuted successfully in 1865.
They accepted his work again in 66 and 68. But
after that, rejection. Consistently. So why the
sudden shift? From acceptance to being seen as
this radical outcast. Because his work was just
moving too fast, too far away from what the salon
wanted. It was seen as too radical, too sketchy.
You know, the salon valued smooth finishes, historical
themes, detail. M1A was all about pure visibility,
quick brushstrokes, atmosphere. Exactly. It was
just discouraged at all official levels, as one
source puts it. So by 1880, after one last failed
attempt, he gave up on the salon completely.
That rejection basically solidified his path
outside the establishment. And that rejection,
it coincided with some really intense personal
hardship. Which kind of brings us to the birth
of Impressionism as an organized movement. Around
1867, his father completely cut off his allowance.
Yeah, that was after Monet started his relationship
with his model, Camille Doncier. And she soon
became pregnant with her first son, Jean. So
no money from dad. How did they survive? It was
rough. Really rough. Even though he clearly loved
Camille and John, he painted so many tender portraits
of them. Poverty was just a constant companion.
They relied entirely on handouts, loans from
friends, help from patrons like Louis Joaquin
Gaudibert. The sources paint a pretty grim picture
sometimes, don't they? Oh, yeah. Stories of not
being able to pay a hotel bill in 1870, having
to pawn things, constantly moving, facing eviction,
utter desperation at times. They finally got
married in June 1870, but that was just as the
Franco... Depression War was breaking out. Terrible
timing. And to avoid being conscripted again,
they immediately fled to London, self -imposed
exile. Which sounds awful, another upheaval.
But that London exile, 1870 to 71, it actually
turned out to be massively important for his
career, didn't it? Hugely important. Critically,
this is where he met the art dealer Paul Duran
Rule. Ah, the legendary Duran Rule. Very same.
He became the champion, the main dealer for the
Impressionists. He bought their work when basically
everyone else, especially the critics, was just
tearing it apart. That relationship provided
a vital, if sometimes unsteady, financial lifeline
for Monet and the others. And London offered
artistic inspiration too, right? He saw works
by British masters like Turner and Constable.
Yes, he deeply admired them. From J .M .W. Turner,
it was that incredible way he treated light,
how it could almost dissolve forms, especially
those paintings of fog on the town. Right. Turner
showed him how atmosphere itself, what Monet
later called the envelope, could be the main
subject. Exactly. And from John Constable, it
was that commitment to the immediacy, the spontaneity
of landscape painting. Monet absorbed those lessons
from the Brits and then, well, made them entirely
his own. But it wasn't all smooth sailing in
London either. I found this fascinating detail
in our surface. Apparently the police were watching
him. Watching him? Really? Really. Why? Get this.
Seven different police reports were written about
Monet between June and October 1871. They suspected
him of revolutionary activities. No way. Just
for painting landscapes. It seems like it might
have been wartime paranoia, you know? A foreign
artist acting unconventionally, painting outdoors.
Whatever the reason, it meant more trouble. And
his work was also refused entry to the Royal
Academy exhibition there. So... rejected in Paris,
rejected in London. He really couldn't get a
break from the establishment. It seems not. Well,
that kind of institutional rejection really cemented
the need for them to create their own venue,
their own revolution. So by 1874, Monet, Renoir,
Pissarro, Cezanne, Degas, Berthe Morisot, others,
they formed the Anonymous Society of Painters,
Sculptors, and Engravers. Monet was a driving
force in organizing that, wasn't he? Absolutely.
A leading figure. And they specifically chose
the name anonymous to signal they weren't defining
themselves by one style, but just setting themselves
up against the judgmental salon system. And yet
history ended up defining them with a single
style anyway, thanks to that impression, Sunrise
painting, and Leroy's sarcastic review. Exactly.
While the conservative critics latched onto the
unfinished look, the more progressive critics
immediately saw something important. they praised
the group for capturing modern life the fleeting
moments the true appearance of things and Monet
quickly got a reputation within that group as
the foremost landscape painter, right? Really
dedicated to documenting the purely visible.
Yes, absolutely. And this dedication to the visible,
to capturing transient effects, led him to tackle
some really challenging modern subjects, like
the Garcent -Lazar series from 1877. A train
station. Why paint a busy, noisy train station?
Because it was the absolute peak of modernity
back then. All that noise, chaos, movement. And
most importantly for Monet, it offered the perfect
subject for capturing... capturing fleeting effects,
steam and smoke from the trains. Ah, the ultimate
ephemeral medium. Precisely. He made about a
dozen paintings of the station, chose seven for
the exhibition, and apparently coordinated them
very carefully. He wanted to show the station
at different times, capturing the arrival and
departure of trains, showing how the steam and
the natural light interacted, changing the color
and form constantly. So that desire to paint
the same place multiple times, tracking the changes,
that was the seed of his famous series method
later on. Absolutely. The absolute precursor.
He was already thinking about how to paint time
itself. But his experiments, like focusing intensely
on that train station, were happening against
a backdrop of personal tragedy, unfortunately.
Things took a turn in the mid -1870s. His wife,
Camille. Yeah, by 1876, Camille was seriously
ill. She did give birth to their second son,
Michelle, in 1878, but her health just collapsed
after that. She was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
And she died in 1879. He was devastated, wasn't
he? Profoundly. But the study he painted of her
on her deathbed, it's one of the most complex,
psychologically revealing things he ever did.
It shows this intense duality in him. Duality?
How so? The grieving husband, absolutely. But
also the objective, almost detached observer.
He confessed years later to his friend Georges
Clemenceau, who later became prime minister of
France. Right. He confessed that as he was looking
at Camille's dead face, his first instinct, his
automatic reflex, was to analyze the colors.
He said he was just systematically noting the
colors according to an automatic reflex. Wow,
that's a staggering thing to admit. Even in that
moment of intense grief, the artist's eye, the
need to analyze light and color, just took over.
It seems so. It shows how deeply ingrained that
way of seeing was for him. It couldn't be switched
off, even then. The critic John Berger wrote
about that painting, calling it a terrible blizzard
of loss which will forever efface her features.
A blizzard of loss. That captures it. It really
hints at the kind of intense, singular focus
he brought to his art, maybe at the expense of
everything else sometimes. It certainly suggests
that. And after Camille's death, things were
incredibly difficult again. His main patron at
the time, Ernest Toshide, went bankrupt. Monet
was essentially destitute once more. So what
did he do? He ended up moving to a town called
Vethoy, and he shared a house there with the
now bankrupt Hoshide family, Ernest, his wife
Alice, and their children. Alice was already
basically running the combined household. A very
complicated arrangement. Extremely. And it evolved
dramatically over time. After Ernest Hoshide
died some years later, Monet and Alice Hoshide
began a relationship. They eventually moved the
entire blended family. Monet's two sons and Alice's
six children, first to Poissy in 1881 and then,
crucially, to Giverny in 1883. And they eventually
married. Yes, in 1892, after Ernest had passed
away. And interestingly, Alice's third daughter,
Suzanne, became a favorite model for Monet in
some of his later figure paintings. So with this
new, large, blended family and eventually settling
in Giverny, he finally found some domestic stability
after all the chaos. He did. And that stability
seemed to trigger a fundamental shift in his
working habits. He started really preferring
to work alone, actively seeking solitude, getting
away from crowded tourist spots where he'd painted
earlier. His letters from that time often mention
needing isolation, right? Demanding absolute
focus. Yes, his letters to Alice are full of
it. He needed to concentrate entirely on the
work. And this push for solitude coincided perfectly
with the end of his long financial struggles.
Ah, so things finally started looking up financially.
Definitely. His real prosperity began after a
series of successful painting trips. And critically...
When his work started selling really well in
the American market, that made a huge difference.
Any particular trips that stand out from that
period? The trip to Bordighera on the Italian
Riviera in 1884 is a key one. He spent almost
three months there, produced around 38 paintings.
He was just captivated by the light. He called
it magic, described the region as a fairy tale
country. But the light there also presented a
new kind of challenge for him, didn't it? Something
about the vegetation. Yes, exactly. The sheer
abundance of growth. the luxuriant exotic plants.
It was difficult for his impressionist technique.
He wrote to Alice about it, saying things like,
these palm trees are exasperating and also the
motifs are extremely difficult to render. Everything
is so lush. So the specific forms, the complexity,
it kind of resisted the broad, quick brush strokes
he was used to. Precisely. It was a real battle
between his established method and this incredibly
rich, detailed subject matter. He had to adapt.
And even though there was still some initial
financial bumps, Durand Rule actually had his
own financial crisis around then and had to pawn
some of those Bordigiera paintings. Right. Temporary
setback. But overall, by the end of the 1880s,
Monet's financial worries were basically over,
largely thanks to those American sales and growing
critical acclaim. And that financial security
finally allowed him to create his own perfect,
controlled painting environment. Which leads
us straight to Giverny. Right. In 1890, Monet
finally had enough money to buy the house and
the property at Giverny that he'd been renting
since 1883. And this place, it became his sanctuary,
his primary, almost sole muse for the last 40
years of his life. It provided the stability
he needed for his most intense artistic experiments,
didn't it? Absolutely. And Giverny wasn't just
a house with a nice garden. It was, in itself,
a curated living work of art. designed by Monet
specifically to be painted. He really became
the architect of his own landscape. I read he
employed up to seven gardeners at one point.
That's right. He meticulously planned every layout,
every planting. He treated the garden like an
extension of his studio, a controlled environment
where he could manipulate color and light through
the plantings themselves. And he was particularly
obsessed with the water garden. Oh, completely.
He expanded the existing pond, even diverted
a local stream to feed it. And most famously,
he imported water lilies, not just any water
lilies. Yes. He cultivated the white ones native
to France, but also brought in cultivars from
South America and Egypt. This gave him this incredible
range of colors, yellows, blues, whites that
would age into pinks. It was all about creating
the perfect palette in the pond itself. That
level of control is amazing, and it directly
leads into his most famous innovation. The series
method. You mentioned the Gare Saint -Lazare
paintings hinted at it. Exactly. The series method
really grew out of his dissatisfaction with the
limitations of standard impressionism. You know,
the idea that one painting could capture one
moment perfectly. He felt that wasn't enough.
Because the light changes so fast. Precisely.
The series was his answer to capturing not just
the single moment, but the passage of time itself.
the dynamism of light. He realized he needed
multiple canvases showing the exact same scene,
but under different light conditions, different
weather, different seasons. What did the public
think when they first saw these? Imagine going
to an exhibition and seeing, say, 20 paintings
of haystacks or 20 paintings of the same cathedral
facade. Bewilderment, definitely for some, but
also excitement. Take the ruined cathedral series,
painted between 1892 and 94. He did 26 views
in total. And his focus wasn't the building's
architecture or its religious meaning. It was
the light on the building. Purely the light.
How it interacted with the stone surface at different
times of day and different weather. When he exhibited
20 of these together in 1895, it was a radical
statement. The message was clear. The real subject
isn't the solid object. It's the ephemeral veil
of atmosphere surrounding it. Light and air.
And the sheer logistical effort involved. It's
mind -boggling. The sources say he'd work on
multiple canvases at once. Yes, constantly switching
between them as the light changed. He might have
as many as eight canvases on the go simultaneously.
He'd work on one for maybe an hour. Then as the
sun moved, he'd have to switch to the next one
that matched the new light condition. So eight
easels set up, probably eight different palettes
mixed. It required incredible discipline and
timing. Almost scientific precision. The series
wasn't just about making pretty variations. It
was a form of documentation, a study of optics
and time. And he applied this method internationally,
too. He went back to London several times. Staying
at the Savoy Hotel, right, for those famous London
paintings. Exactly. And he had that very specific
view about London. He said he loved it only in
winter. Why? Because of the fog. He famously
said, without the fog... London wouldn't be a
beautiful city. It's the fog that gives it its
magnificent breadth. Such a perfect Monet quote.
It goes right back to that idea of the envelope,
the atmosphere being the key thing. So he produced
that amazing London fog series between 1899 and
1904. Dozens of paintings. Yeah. 41 of Waterloo
Bridge, 34 of Charing Cross Bridge, 19 of the
Houses of Parliament, often painted from a room
at St. Thomas's Hospital, which gave him this
fantastic vantage point across the Thames. And
here's a crucial point. Those London paintings
weren't entirely finished outdoors, were they?
No, that's right. Our sources are clear they
were significantly retouched back in his studio
at Giverty, sometimes years later, right up until
1904. So that shows an evolution in his method,
doesn't it? Yeah. He's using the initial outdoor
impression, the plein air sketch, but then he's
refining it, almost building upon it from memory
and theory back in the studio. He's painting
the idea of the fog, the refined envelope. Exactly.
It's a move towards a more conceptual approach,
still rooted in observation, but increasingly
reliant on his internal understanding of light
and atmosphere. And that series method, that
focus on atmosphere, it really paved the way
for the subject that would completely dominate
the last two decades of his life. The water lilies.
He started them around 1899. Yes. And they just
took over. It became his most ambitious. sequence,
as he called it. He ended up painting over 250
canvases of the Waterlily Pond. An incredible
number. And when he first exhibited a large group
of them, around 42 canvases in 1909. The critics
immediately saw something new was happening.
They noted he'd reached the ultimate degree of
abstraction. The focus had shifted completely.
It wasn't about the pond in a landscape anymore.
It was about the surface of the water itself.
Reflections, lilies, light. Exactly. And a key
part of that shift was eliminating the horizon
line, getting rid of the banks of the pond in
the painting. By the mid -1910s, he developed
this incredibly fluid, almost immersive style.
He started using different canvas shapes, too,
more square formats, even circular ones, and
working on huge mural -sized panels. Why was
getting rid of the pond's edge, the perimeter,
such a big conceptual jump? Because the edge,
the bank, the horizon line, That's what anchors
a painting in verifiable, measurable reality.
When you remove it, the painting becomes this
field of color and light and texture. The pond
stops being just a subject in a landscape. It
becomes the starting point for an almost abstract
art, as people described it. He was painting
light almost divorced from the thing it was illuminating.
Pretty much just the reflections, the surface,
the interplay of light and water. But this period
of incredible artistic freedom, this push towards
abstraction, it coincided with some profound
personal losses and physical decline for Monet.
Sadly, yes. His second wife, Alice, died in 1911.
Then his eldest son, Jean, died in 1914. And
right around 1913, Monet began developing cataracts
in both eyes. Which must be just about the worst
thing that can happen to a painter so obsessed
with light and color. Absolutely devastating.
And the impact on his vision, and therefore his
painting, was immediate and quite dramatic. You
could see it in the canvases from that period.
How did it change? His brush strokes became much
broader, less defined. Sharp lines started to
disappear. And crucially, his perception of color
shifted dramatically. He started seeing the world
and painting it with this overwhelming reddish
or yellowish tinge. Why does that happen with
cataracts? Because the lens of the eye clouds
over in yellows, it starts to filter out the
blues and greens. So the artist, without realizing
it, compensates by adding more reds and yellows
to make the colors look right to their eye, even
though it's distorted. So his paintings became
much warmer, sometimes almost garishly so. Yes.
The palettes became very heavy on reds, oranges,
yellows. It's a known effect of cataracts on
artists' vision. It sounds like a complete nightmare
for someone like Monet. How did he even continue
working when he couldn't trust his own eyes?
Incredible discipline, basically. And reliance
on memory and intellect. He knew intellectually
what color something should be. He had to start
labeling his paint tubes meticulously. He arranged
his palette in a strict, consistent order so
he knew where each color was by touch and position.
Wow. But he admitted himself that he became insensitive
to the finer shades of tonalities seen close
up. He was, in a way, painting the idea of color,
his memory of color, rather than the optical
reality in front of him. Did people try to get
him to have surgery? His friend Clemenceau was
pushing him, wasn't he? Yes, Clemenceau strongly
encouraged him for years. But Monet was terrified.
extremely reluctant. He feared a botched operation
would leave him blind or change his vision in
ways he couldn't control. He actually said he'd
rather give up painting entirely than risk losing
a little of these things that I love. But he
eventually did have the surgery. He finally gave
in and had cataract surgery on one eye in 1923.
But the recovery was really difficult. He struggled
for a long time with cyanopsia. Cyanopsia? What's
that? It's seeing everything with a blue tint.
So after years of seeing Yellard, suddenly his
world was overwhelmingly blue. Imagine going
from one extreme distortion to another. It was
incredibly disorienting. That must have been
just horrifying. I read he actually started destroying
canvases from the period just before his surgery.
He did. Looking back at them with this slowly
clearing vision, he felt they were terribly distorted
by that red -yellow cataract cast. He couldn't
stand them. The turning point... Thankfully,
it came when he was fitted with special tinted
glasses, Zeiss lenses. Then they helped? They
corrected the cyanopsia. He apparently exclaimed
that he was finally able to see the real colors
again. By 1925, his vision had improved significantly,
and this allowed him to go back to some of those
canvases he hadn't destroyed. And this is fascinating.
He started retouching them, didn't he? Changing
the colors. Yes. This is a superb detail. He
went back to those preoperative... water lily
paintings, the ones that looked too yellow -red
to his newly corrected vision, and he started
making them bluer. He was actively correcting
the distortions caused by the disease, using
his restored vision to impose what he now saw
as the true blue tones. That's incredible, adjusting
his past work based on his present sight. It
really shows his relentless drive for perceptual
accuracy, even correcting his own past self.
And amidst all this intense personal struggle
with his vision, he was still deeply engaged
with the world around him. During World War I,
for instance. His son Michel was serving in the
war, right? Yes. And during that time, Monet
painted this powerful series of Weeping Willows.
They were intended as a patriotic homage, a memorial
to the French soldiers who had fallen. It highlights
that even his very aesthetic choices, his subjects,
were often deeply bound up in his sense of national
identity and the events of his time. So when
we look at those final huge water lilies, the
ones painted while his site was failing, and
then the ones he retouched after the surgery,
they really serve a vital role in art history,
don't they? They're seen as this crucial link.
Absolutely. A bridge, really. He's often called
an intermediary between 19th century tradition,
Impressionism, and the rise of 20th century abstract
art. What creates that link? Is it just the abstraction?
It's partly the abstraction, yes, the reduction
of the subject to almost pure color and texture,
but it's also the sheer scale of those late works.
For many years, ironically, these late paintings
were kind of ignored by critics, even after they
were installed in the Musée de l 'Orangerie in
Paris in 1927, shortly after his death. But they
had a major comeback, a rediscovery, in the 1950s.
They did, yes, specifically by the abstract expressionist
painters in America, artists like Ellsworth.
Kelly, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock. They looked
at Monet's huge immersive water lily panels.
The ones that surround you in the orgery. Exactly.
And they recognized an anticipation of their
own concerns. The abandonment of traditional
perspective and depth, the focus on the canvas
as a field of action or sensation, the large
scale meant to envelop the viewer. Monet perhaps
unintentionally provided a vital historical precedent
for modern abstraction. And his public legacy
today is obviously huge, and so much of it is
tied to Giverny itself. Definitely. His home,
his studio, and crucially, the water lily pond
he created, they were eventually bequeathed by
his son Michel to the French Academy of Fine
Arts. After extensive, meticulous restoration,
the whole property opened to the public in 1980.
And you can visit today and see the gardens,
the house, and also his personal collection of
Japanese woodcut prints, right, which were a
big influence on him. Yes, a huge influence.
You can see it in his compositions, the flattened
perspective, the decorative quality sometimes.
That collection is still there at Quirini. And,
of course, the institutional pinnacle of his
late work remains those huge curved water lily
panels permanently installed in the Musée de
l 'Orangerie that took years of negotiation with
the French government to make happen. The sheer
value of his work on the market today just underscores
that cultural importance. His popularity exploded
in the second half of the 20th century. Oh, absolutely.
His paintings command astronomical prices. For
instance, Le Pot de Chemin de Fer aux Jantes
sold for over $41 million back in 2008. And later
that same year, one of the Water Lilies paintings
went for over... $80 million. Just incredible
sums. But that immense value also casts a light
on a much darker history associated with his
work, doesn't it? The issue of Nazi looting.
Yes, that's a crucial and often painful part
of the legacy. Monet's works were highly desirable,
and many were stolen or forcibly sold by Jewish
collectors and dealers during the Nazi era. The
list of victims is harrowing. You mentioned René
Gimpel, the Jewish art dealer who owned haystacks
at Giverny and was killed in a concentration
camp. And Paul Rosenberg, another major dealer,
had a nymphious water lily stolen from him. And
these stories continue to surface even relatively
recently. Remember the discovery of Cornelius
Gerlitz's hidden trove of art in Munich a few
years back? Yes, I was astonished. Well, among
the works found in Gurlitt's suitcase was a Monet
that had belonged to a Jewish retail magnate
confiscated by the Nazis. It just underscores
how these beautiful objects can be tied up in
this incredibly intense, high stakes history
of persecution and theft. Thankfully, there are
ongoing efforts to return these works. Our sources
mention one case, Borde de Mer, which was bought
by the Parlogi family in 1936, just before they
had to flee Austria. It was finally restored
to their granddaughters just this year, 2024.
That's good to hear. Restitution is incredibly
important. It ensures we remember and appreciate
the full context, the sometimes very fraught
human stories behind these masterpieces. So if
we try to sum up Monet's immense career. You
really see this masterclass in artistic evolution,
don't you? He starts as the rebellious, plain
-air pioneer, battling the salon establishment.
Then he invents the definitive art series, pushing
impressionism to its logical conclusion, maybe
beyond. And finally, he becomes this, well, almost
accidental abstractionist in his later years,
driven partly by his own vision, but also profoundly
shaped by the limitations of his failing sight.
He truly went far beyond the initial goals of
impressionism. We started by saying impressionism
was about recording perception, capturing the
fleeting moment. But in those final monumental
water lilies, he seems to be after something
else entirely. I think so, too. Yeah. It feels
like he's trying to transcend just pure visibility,
trying to paint only light and atmosphere, turning
the objective physical world of the pond into
this purely subjective. dazzling internal vision.
Which leaves us with a really powerful final
thought for you, the listener, to consider. Monet's
greatest, most abstract works, the ones that
anticipate modern art, they coincided exactly
with his physical decline, particularly his failing
eyesight. Right. He was forced to rely more and
more on memory, on theory, on his internal concept
of color, because his actual vision was so compromised.
So the question is, was that final leap into
abstraction in The Water Lilies primarily a triumph
of his artistic will, his vision pushing forward?
Or was it perhaps a brilliant but ultimately
necessary adaptation to the physical limitations
imposed on him by his own body? What happens
artistically when a painter who dedicated his
life to seeing the world accurately is forced?
through failing sight, to start painting the
idea of the pond rather than the verifiable reality
of it. That shift from observed reality to the
painted idea, maybe that's the very essence of
the transition to modern art that Monet embodies.
Something to think about. Definitely. Thank you
for joining us for this deep dive into the life
and work of Claude Monet.