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‘Monet in Normandy’ is great, gorgeous escape
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Reviewed by: FRAN HELLER Contributing Writer
In the 19th century, English Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron would thrust themselves into the bosom of stormy Mother Nature for the ultimate sublime experience.
No less is true of the visual artists, including the great French Impressionist Claude Monet. He set up his “portable studio” in a boat or at the edge of a cliff to get closer to the natural landscape.
A groundbreaking exhibition, “Monet in Normandy,” currently at The Cleveland Museum of Art through May 20, examines the artist’s long and intimate relationship with this unique region in France.
The approximately 50 paintings on display, arranged geographically and chronologically, span more than 60 years of Monet’s career, most of which were spent in his beloved Normandy. Born in Paris in 1840, Monet moved with his family to Le Havre on the coast of Normandy at age 5. He settled in the town of Giverny in 1883 and lived there until his death in 1926.
The exhibit begins with one of Monet’s single most important seascapes in the first decade of his career, “Garden at Sainte-Adresse,” painted in 1867.
Color seizes you first. Never was water so aquamarine, a sky so blue, and a garden so green and overrun in a riotous profusion of red and yellow foliage. Little wonder that this sumptuous painting occupies its own gallery, like a reigning monarch presiding over its subjects.
Sainte-Adresse was a suburb of Le Havre, a playground for the wealthy. The scene is the garden adjacent to Monet’s aunt’s house. In the painting, Monet’s aunt and father are seated on the garden terrace, with their backs to us, overlooking the English Channel. Flags snap in the breeze, while fishing boats and other sea craft can be seen in the distance.
There is no hint of Monet’s private life of turmoil and poverty in the serenity of this and other paintings. At the time, Monet was living with his common-law wife and model, Camille Doncieux. It was a relationship that his family disproved of and tried to discourage. Monet married Camille in 1870.
In “Regatta at Sainte-Adresse,” four fashionably dressed figures can be seen in the foreground, while in the distance another group of tourists emerges from one of the resorts to watch the regatta, an entertainment created for visitors. In this painting, Monet presents a subject that was to become a favorite Impressionist motif n the modern pastime of taking leisure by the sea.
Monet was not unmindful of the tourist market when he painted “Regatta.”
“The Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide,” painted at age 24, is one of two seascapes that earned Monet critical acclaim. The artist’s vantage point catapults the onlooker into a scene of gently rippling waves, pebbled beach and low-lying cliff.
Monet’s wife died in 1879 following a long illness after the birth of their second son.
Fécamp, with its rocky, desolate cliffs and turbulent seacoast offered the grieving Monet a creative outlet for his emotional state. Two 1881 paintings reflect the artist’s change from realism to a more abstract and atmospheric painterly technique.
“By the Sea at Fécamp” is a desolate scene of sheer rock, churning ice caps and threatening sky. The wildness of the weather is reflected in the savagery of the brushstrokes n slashes and smears of color that summon the relentless fury of a rough sea.
In this painting, Monet has descended to the base of a cliff and set up his easel on one of the slippery rocks, with waves lapping at his feet. Here, the artist, like the viewer, is thrust in the midst of the raging elements.
The serenity of “Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe,” painted in 1882, sharply contrasts with the agitated scenes of Fécamp. Monet’s new companion is the still-married Alice Hoschedé.
The painting, part of the Cleveland museum’s permanent collection, is a view of cliff and beach at Pourville, one of Monet’s favorite haunts on the Normandy coast. Painted in brilliant sunlight, the gold and yellow hues of the cliffs shimmer in the glassy blue water like a mirror image. Tiny black strokes in the distance indicate some bathers, while a cluster of small houses nestled in the cliff suggest human presence and scale.
Normandy transformed Monet from the Realist tradition to an Impressionist who forged a new style of painting that led to modern art.
“The Cliff Walk, Pourville” (1882) depicts two female figures admiring the view of the sea. One shields herself from the sun with a parasol. The drama is not only in the subject matter, but in the technique, in which Monet captures the energy of nature in his agitated, windswept brushstrokes.
In the 1880s, Monet did a series of paintings on the coastal customs house. The customs house was one of a string of stone cottages built to house the customs officers who kept watch over the Channel coast during Napoleon’s continental blockade against Britain. In Monet’s day, local fishermen used it as a storage shed and temporary refuge.
In “Customs House at Varengeville,” Monet’s swirling brushwork conveys the unremitting wind and surging whitecaps of the incoming tide. “You know my passion for the sea. I’m mad about it,” wrote Monet, who presents the sea in its infinite variety and at different times of day. …mile Zola wrote of Monet: “He loves the water like a mistress.”
Monet’s works from …tretat centered upon the famed Manneporte “Great Portal” natural rock formations. Monet visited …tretat, one of the most picturesque spots on France’s Norman coast, where he painted more than 60 views of the cliffs.
The Manneporte, or Great Portal, is the largest and most dramatic of the three natural limestone arches at …tratat. In the painting “The Manneporte (…tretat),” Monet is in a rented boat looking directly up at the massive arch. Scale is conveyed in two miniscule figures standing as spectators on a rock above the crashing waves.
Examples from Monet’s celebrated series of paintings, the Grainstacks, Poplars and Rouen Cathedral, are included in the Giverny section.
Monet painted at least 25 canvases in his Grainstack series, including “Grainstack in the Sunlight,” evoking the huge size of these stacks which stood 15-20 feet tall.
The bucolic “Wheat Field,” part of the Cleveland museum’s permanent collection, captures a lush field of green alfalfa and golden wheat presided over by stately poplars like cathedrals. A curving path beckons the viewer into the composition.
Guest curator Dr. Richard R. Brettell, author of the three catalogue essays, notes that Jewish artist and the oldest of the Impressionists, Camille Pissarro, was second only to Monet as a painter of Normandy. The two men were colleagues and friends.
The apotheosis of the exhibit is Monet’s famed “water lilies,” which occupy the last gallery in the exhibit. Monet painted over 300 views of his beloved garden. “Water Lilies (Agapanthus),” from the museum’s permanent collection, dwarfs the other paintings of water lilies on view with its elegant subtlety and majesty.
The painting, part of an ensemble, was created to commemorate the end of WWI. It summarizes Monet’s intimate relationship with the natural world and with Normandy, said Brettell at the media opening.
“Monet in Normandy” is a great and gorgeous escape, an intoxicating orgy of nature in all her moods captured by one of the world’s greatest landscape painters.
In the 19th century, English Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron would thrust themselves into the bosom of stormy Mother Nature for the ultimate sublime experience.
No less is true of the visual artists, including the great French Impressionist Claude Monet. He set up his “portable studio” in a boat or at the edge of a cliff to get closer to the natural landscape.
A groundbreaking exhibition, “Monet in Normandy,” currently at The Cleveland Museum of Art through May 20, examines the artist’s long and intimate relationship with this unique region in France.
The approximately 50 paintings on display, arranged geographically and chronologically, span more than 60 years of Monet’s career, most of which were spent in his beloved Normandy. Born in Paris in 1840, Monet moved with his family to Le Havre on the coast of Normandy at age 5. He settled in the town of Giverny in 1883 and lived there until his death in 1926.
The exhibit begins with one of Monet’s single most important seascapes in the first decade of his career, “Garden at Sainte-Adresse,” painted in 1867.
Color seizes you first. Never was water so aquamarine, a sky so blue, and a garden so green and overrun in a riotous profusion of red and yellow foliage. Little wonder that this sumptuous painting occupies its own gallery, like a reigning monarch presiding over its subjects.
Sainte-Adresse was a suburb of Le Havre, a playground for the wealthy. The scene is the garden adjacent to Monet’s aunt’s house. In the painting, Monet’s aunt and father are seated on the garden terrace, with their backs to us, overlooking the English Channel. Flags snap in the breeze, while fishing boats and other sea craft can be seen in the distance.
There is no hint of Monet’s private life of turmoil and poverty in the serenity of this and other paintings. At the time, Monet was living with his common-law wife and model, Camille Doncieux. It was a relationship that his family disproved of and tried to discourage. Monet married Camille in 1870.
In “Regatta at Sainte-Adresse,” four fashionably dressed figures can be seen in the foreground, while in the distance another group of tourists emerges from one of the resorts to watch the regatta, an entertainment created for visitors. In this painting, Monet presents a subject that was to become a favorite Impressionist motif n the modern pastime of taking leisure by the sea.
Monet was not unmindful of the tourist market when he painted “Regatta.”
“The Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide,” painted at age 24, is one of two seascapes that earned Monet critical acclaim. The artist’s vantage point catapults the onlooker into a scene of gently rippling waves, pebbled beach and low-lying cliff.
Monet’s wife died in 1879 following a long illness after the birth of their second son.
Fécamp, with its rocky, desolate cliffs and turbulent seacoast offered the grieving Monet a creative outlet for his emotional state. Two 1881 paintings reflect the artist’s change from realism to a more abstract and atmospheric painterly technique.
“By the Sea at Fécamp” is a desolate scene of sheer rock, churning ice caps and threatening sky. The wildness of the weather is reflected in the savagery of the brushstrokes n slashes and smears of color that summon the relentless fury of a rough sea.
In this painting, Monet has descended to the base of a cliff and set up his easel on one of the slippery rocks, with waves lapping at his feet. Here, the artist, like the viewer, is thrust in the midst of the raging elements.
The serenity of “Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe,” painted in 1882, sharply contrasts with the agitated scenes of Fécamp. Monet’s new companion is the still-married Alice Hoschedé.
The painting, part of the Cleveland museum’s permanent collection, is a view of cliff and beach at Pourville, one of Monet’s favorite haunts on the Normandy coast. Painted in brilliant sunlight, the gold and yellow hues of the cliffs shimmer in the glassy blue water like a mirror image. Tiny black strokes in the distance indicate some bathers, while a cluster of small houses nestled in the cliff suggest human presence and scale.
Normandy transformed Monet from the Realist tradition to an Impressionist who forged a new style of painting that led to modern art.
“The Cliff Walk, Pourville” (1882) depicts two female figures admiring the view of the sea. One shields herself from the sun with a parasol. The drama is not only in the subject matter, but in the technique, in which Monet captures the energy of nature in his agitated, windswept brushstrokes.
In the 1880s, Monet did a series of paintings on the coastal customs house. The customs house was one of a string of stone cottages built to house the customs officers who kept watch over the Channel coast during Napoleon’s continental blockade against Britain. In Monet’s day, local fishermen used it as a storage shed and temporary refuge.
In “Customs House at Varengeville,” Monet’s swirling brushwork conveys the unremitting wind and surging whitecaps of the incoming tide. “You know my passion for the sea. I’m mad about it,” wrote Monet, who presents the sea in its infinite variety and at different times of day. …mile Zola wrote of Monet: “He loves the water like a mistress.”
Monet’s works from …tretat centered upon the famed Manneporte “Great Portal” natural rock formations. Monet visited …tretat, one of the most picturesque spots on France’s Norman coast, where he painted more than 60 views of the cliffs.
The Manneporte, or Great Portal, is the largest and most dramatic of the three natural limestone arches at …tratat. In the painting “The Manneporte (…tretat),” Monet is in a rented boat looking directly up at the massive arch. Scale is conveyed in two miniscule figures standing as spectators on a rock above the crashing waves.
Examples from Monet’s celebrated series of paintings, the Grainstacks, Poplars and Rouen Cathedral, are included in the Giverny section.
Monet painted at least 25 canvases in his Grainstack series, including “Grainstack in the Sunlight,” evoking the huge size of these stacks which stood 15-20 feet tall.
The bucolic “Wheat Field,” part of the Cleveland museum’s permanent collection, captures a lush field of green alfalfa and golden wheat presided over by stately poplars like cathedrals. A curving path beckons the viewer into the composition.
Guest curator Dr. Richard R. Brettell, author of the three catalogue essays, notes that Jewish artist and the oldest of the Impressionists, Camille Pissarro, was second only to Monet as a painter of Normandy. The two men were colleagues and friends.
The apotheosis of the exhibit is Monet’s famed “water lilies,” which occupy the last gallery in the exhibit. Monet painted over 300 views of his beloved garden. “Water Lilies (Agapanthus),” from the museum’s permanent collection, dwarfs the other paintings of water lilies on view with its elegant subtlety and majesty.
The painting, part of an ensemble, was created to commemorate the end of WWI. It summarizes Monet’s intimate relationship with the natural world and with Normandy, said Brettell at the media opening.
“Monet in Normandy” is a great and gorgeous escape, an intoxicating orgy of nature in all her moods captured by one of the world’s greatest landscape painters.
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