Claude\u00a0Monet is one of those artists we all think we know.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes, that Monet of the ubiquitous \u201cWater Lilies\u201d \u2014 the ones often plastered on classroom walls and in doctor\u2019s offices or on tote bags.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the century since his death in 1926, the man who for many came to define the Impressionist movement in France in the late 19th century with his transcendent abstract views of flowers, water and light, has been chronicled and reproduced extensively.<\/p>\n
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Claude Monet, \u201cThe Doge\u2019s Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore\u201d (1908) by Claude Monet. \u201cMonet and Venice\u201d at the de Young Museum is a worthy exhibition that offers a fresh look at the famed Impressionist artist.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.\/Art Resource, NY<\/p>\n
Still, curator Melissa Buron had compelling reasons to explore the painter with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco\u2019s latest exhibition, \u201cMonet and Venice.\u201d Chief among them: creating the largest reunion of the painter\u2019s works created on his 1908 trip to Venice since 1912.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMonet and Venice\u201d: Painting, works on paper. 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Through July 26. $11-$20; free for children age 17 and younger. De Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F. www.famsf.org<\/a><\/p>\n Organized with the Brooklyn Museum, the show at the de Young offers so much more than just Monet\u2019s radiant Venetian paintings, which have never been the subject of an exhibition. Visitors may also leave with a deeper understanding of one of Monet\u2019s signature themes, which he continued to explore throughout his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Buron, currently the director of collections and chief curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, was a curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which includes the de Young and Legion of Honor museums, for 16 years.. It was during that period her desire to explore this late period of Monet\u2019s career began, sparked by a painting in the FAMSF permanent collection, \u201cThe Grand Canal, Venice.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Claude Monet, left, and his wife Alice at St. Mark\u2019s Square in Venice, Italy, in October 1908.<\/p>\n Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, France\/Bridgeman Images<\/p>\n In 1908 at age 68, the painter and his wife Alice undertook what was intended to be a two week visit to the city.<\/p>\n \u201cThe trip comes at an interesting time for Monet right after he canceled his second attempt at showing the water lilies in 1907,\u201d explained Buron. \u201cHis dealer is under the spell of Fauvism and thinks they\u2019re too big, bright and bold. So Monet throws in the towel and says he\u2019s renouncing the water lilies once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n The Monets stayed at the famed Palazzo Barbero (setting of the 1888 Henry James novella \u201cThe Aspern Papers\u201d) and extended their trip to two months. Initially, Buron said, Monet felt that the city was \u201ctoo beautiful to paint.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He eventually came to produce 37 works while in Venice.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cVenice, Palazzo\u00a0Dario\u201d (1908) by Claude Monet.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Art Institute of Chicago\/Art Resource, NY<\/p>\n To set the historical stage, \u201cMonet and Venice\u201d includes two magnificent Canaletto paintings, \u201cVenice, the Grand Canal looking East With Santa Maria della Salute\u201d <\/a>(1749-50), usually on view at the Legion of Honor, and \u201cVenice, the\u00a0Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day\u201d (circa 1745) from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Those works join a series of 1741 engravings of the city by Michele Giovanni Marieschi.\u00a0<\/p>\n The exhibition also features work by Monet\u2019s contemporaries John Singer Sargent <\/a>(depicting the interior of the Palazzo Barbaro), J.M.W. Turner and a stunning painting by pointalist Paul Signac, \u201cThe Lagoon of Saint Mark, Venice\u201d (1905), showing how his peers were depicting the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 22 Monet paintings of the city are arranged according to Venice\u2019s geography, with depictions of palazzi and other landmarks hung in their real-life sequence. Monet\u2019s Venice quickly emerges as unlike any other artist\u2019s. Painted from inside gondolas, the works offer a cruising view of the city rather than views from above. That\u2019s especially evident in works like \u201cThe Grand Canal, Venice,\u201d where he captures the play of light on the water as it shimmers and reflects in ways that feel heightened yet completely true to life.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Church of San\u00a0Giorgio Maggiore, Venice\u201d (1908) by Claude Monet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Lockton Collection.<\/p>\n That effect carries through in the almost vaporous qualities that seem to envelop works like his views of San Giorgio Maggiore with its 16th century Benedictine basilica. It\u2019s as though sunshine, water and air have combined into a luminous mist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n There is a similar, dreamy haze over \u201cThe Palazzo Ducale Seen From San Giorgio Maggiore,\u201d which shows the Doge\u2019s Palace from the island. In the paintings, the air and water seem to interact, revealing an almost purple depth to the canal.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost as though Venice and Monet were waiting for each other. His understanding of nature and light bring new life to even the most brooding architectural depictions, like \u201cThe Palazzo du Mula.\u201d That painting carries both a sense of verdant abundance and the slight stench of decay that water often brings.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the final room of the exhibition we see two depictions of his signature water lilies created after the Venice trip that were part of the 48 water lilies he presented in 1909. \u201cThe water becomes a character in its own right in these later paintings,\u201d noted Buron.<\/p>\n \u201cWater Lilies\u201d (circa 1914-17) by Claude Monet.<\/p>\n Randy Dodson\/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco<\/p>\n After viewing the Venice paintings, it\u2019s clear Venice \u2014 and what it taught him late in his career \u2014 stayed with Monet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of death in Venice, this is an artist\u2019s rebirth in Venice,\u201d said Buron.<\/p>\n For those seeking to learn more about the works, the exhibition\u2019s primary sponsor, Anthropic, includes a text-only dialogue experience with a modern-day Claude, the company\u2019s artificial intelligence chatbot.<\/p>\n \u201cMonet and Venice\u201d is the another spectacular reexamination of an Impressionist master by FAMSF following recent successes with Mary Cassatt,<\/a> Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot<\/a>.\u00a0Much like Venice did for Monet, Buron offers a new view that will make us reexamine what we think we know about the painter.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claude\u00a0Monet is one of those artists we all think we know.\u00a0 Yes, that Monet of the ubiquitous \u201cWater…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,5601,162534,305,306,811,308,93,61,60,10679],"class_list":["post-358837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-arts-and-exhibits","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-california","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-san-francisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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