Artists & Illustrators - UK (2019-10)

CLAUDE MONET

ABOVE Claude

Monet, Wisteria,

1917-’20, oil

on canvas,

150.5x200.5cm

LEFT Claude Monet,

Water Lilies, 1916 -

’19, oil on canvas,

200x180cm

The beginnings of his later style are falling into

place here, as Monet navigates his way down the

garden path towards abstraction. There is the

recognisable structure of the Japanese bridge

anchoring the mottled greens and pale blues,

providing a handle on things in an otherwise

tightly cropped composition that abstracts the

landscape behind. Contrast this with The

Japanese Bridge, on loan from the Musée

Marmottan and painted between 1918 and

1924, just two years before he died, and the

shift in his style is clear to see. Were it not for

the specifics of the title, audiences may never

have truly known for sure that the rich red curve

was intended to signify that same span.

There are multiple theories as to why Monet’s

painting style developed in this direction. One of

the most popular is that his failing eyesight was

contributing to this fragmenting of his artistic

vision. He commented on his own changing

perceptions of colour from his mid-60s onwards

and by the age of 72, he was diagnosed with

nuclear cataracts in both eyes. One modern

ophthalmologist even went as far as writing a

paper, enticingly titled Ophthalmology and Art:

Simulation of Monet’s Cataracts and Degas’

Retinal Disease, which noted that his later works

were “strangely coarse and garish” when

compared with his refined earlier paintings.

The romantics among us want to believe that

this shift was not merely the onset of old age but

rather a late blooming continuation of his earlier

Impressionist experiments. Gemeentemuseum

argues that Monet was, in fact, “exploring new

artistic frontiers” that would be continued in the

work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and their

Abstract Expressionist contemporaries some

three decades later. Influential art critic Clement

Greenberg’s 1955 essay, “American-Type”

Painting, noted that Monet’s later paintings

in particular, with their narrow tonal ranges,

“should now begin to stand forth as a peak

of revolutionary art”.

Certain facts do back up the theory that

Monet was on a more deliberate path, not least

the addition of a second studio at Giverny, one

which allowed him the opportunity to work on

far larger canvases and step back further from

them, causing him to consider the whole from

a new perspective where details could be

rendered and seen far more obliquely.

One of the highlights of the Gemeentemuseum

exhibition will be the chance to see several

paintings from an iconic late series in the same

FONDATION BEYELER/GEMEENTEMUSEUM, DEN HAAG