A History of European Art

Lecture 43: Monet and Degas

the haystack has a pyramidal shape with bands of landscape neatly behind

it. With this structure in place, Monet could then concentrate on the effects

of light on his subject. Perhaps the most radical series that Monet painted

was of the Rouen Cathedral. We see Rouen Cathedral, Morning Sun, Blue

Harmony (1893). The entire canvas is ¿ lled with the façade of the cathedral.

As a contrast to Morning Sun, we see Rouen Cathedral, West Façade,

Sunlight (1894). Morning Sun seems more infused with a bright, deep blue,

while Sunlight shows the strong effects of full day. The three-dimensionality

of the façade is more fully expressed in the second painting.

Monet lived and worked at Giverny, on the Seine near Rouen, for more than

40 years. Although he traveled often and widely, Giverny was his center.

There he gradually created his own world to paint, in the Norman garden

and the waterlily garden. He also painted nearby on the Seine. We see here

Morning on the Seine, near Giverny (1897). At ¿ rst glance, the painting

exhibits a degree of abstraction that

makes the viewer think it could be

inverted; however, Monet clearly shows

the horizon line.

When he was painting this poetic

series on the Seine, Monet was also

working continuously on paintings of

his waterlily garden. When he exhibited

48 of them in 1909, he called them

Waterlilies, Waterscapes. He painted

from the bank or in a small rowboat, but he never showed the bank or the

edge of the pond—in other words, he never showed the horizon line. We

see a photo of Monet’s Giverny water garden (September 1992), which

shows that studying the garden could be a rich and somewhat puzzling visual

experience. The only sky and light seen are in reÀ ection, and the À oating

waterlilies confound our sense of depth and space.

When the opportunity was offered Monet to paint two series of paintings

for two large oval rooms in a museum in Paris, the artist did something

quite different. As we see in this photo showing an interior view of one of

the Waterlily Rooms (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris), Monet made a great

Degas died in a much

changed world, with the

First World War raging. He

lived his last years in what

a friend called “his vague

and grandiose solitude.”