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creation. The sight of this is wholly mysterious, poetic, enchantingly unreal,
which delivers a strange sensation, a mixed feeling of unease and pleasure
triggered off by the surrounding water”. (René Gimpel)
Art critic François Thiébault-Sisson comments his visit to Giverny as fol-
lows: “On entry my eyes opened wide as I marvelled at the sight before
me. As for the effect the colour scheme had on me, it was literally out-
standing. The artist’s delicate way of distributing colours allowed purple
hues and yellows, amethysts
and pinks, violets and mallow to
stand out in perfect harmony
on a light or dark almost black
base enriched with touch-
es of green. The water lilies in
the calm water of the pond
seemed to rest upon their wide
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their corollas contoured by
green domes while the centre
of the composition was near-
ly always empty, but in a very
relative way since it represent-
ed the painter’s chosen spot
onto which he concentrated
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light on shiny, calm, rippled, or
slightly wavy water in the pond.
There in that very spot the
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tion of a small cluster of clouds
as if suspended in the pink or
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easy enough to discern fog like
strands lift and dissolve into
mist at dawn. Another painting
and the whole scene sparkles with sunlight at the close of day – sunset-
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and turquoise sky. Everything was incredibly powerful and sumptuously
rich underscored by intense colours oozing with life”.
We wish to end this brief excursus with a few lines borrowed from
Amédée Ozenfant’s Memoirs (painter and art writer). “Monet dedicated
the last few years of his life to a playful series of water lilies. When I saw
him I marvelled at the fact that I caught myself raise my hat to him, to the
man, who had achieved all of this and had painted them. When a painted
canvass delivers such instinctive reactions, there is no way of trying to
deny: Monet’s work is noble and powerful”.atory: “My studio! I have never had a studio and I fail to understand why
we should close ourselves in a room” he then went on to point an index
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fashion while adding: “ Here’s my studio”.
But according to Gustave Geffroy: “You just had to see Claude Monet in
Giverny, to be able to say you know him, his personality, his love of life, his
inward nature. For he who has conceived and made this small universe
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cent is a great, grand artist”.
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when a kaleidoscope oozing with vigilant, changeable and yet silent hap-
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of day, the colour scheme would sparkle almost from beneath water
lilies in late afternoon with hues of changing dreamy red pinks preceding
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with tender water lilies the Master had painted onto sublime canvasses.
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“Bernheim talked to me about an enormous and mysterious decorative
element, the painter is currently working on and is one he’d probably
like us to see..... he leads us along the paths lining his garden rows till
we reach a newly completed studio resembling a village church. Inside
there’s a single huge room with a glass roof. A dozen or so paintings line
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