{"id":355813,"date":"2026-03-24T16:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/355813\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T16:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:32:11","slug":"what-a-fascinating-challenge-for-an-artist-how-monet-captured-venice-in-his-twilight-years-claude-monet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/355813\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018What a fascinating challenge for an artist\u2019: how Monet captured Venice in his twilight years | Claude Monet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claude Monet<\/a> was 68 years old before he ever set foot in Venice, surprisingly keeping his distance from a city that for hundreds of years has attracted many of Europe\u2019s best painters. When Monet finally did get there, he created dozens of paintings and the French impressionist<\/a>\u2019s Venetian works are now the subject of a show<\/a> at San Francisco\u2019s de Young Museum, simply titled Monet and Venice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might have been insecurity, because Venice<\/a> had been painted so famously and by so many major names in western history,\u201d said the de Young\u2019s Melissa Buron, who co-curated the show with Lisa Small. As she explained, given Venice\u2019s artistic pedigree, even a master such as Monet would have reason to feel intimidated by the location.<\/p>\n

In addition to collecting two dozen of the Frenchman\u2019s works in Venice, the show also offers Venetian paintings from other greats \u2013 including James McNeill Whistler, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, John Singer Sargent, JMW Turner and Paul Signac. The show is rounded out by a number of Monet\u2019s early pieces and some late waterlilies, packing in more than 100 works overall. The result is an entrancing, airy afternoon holiday filled with much to seduce the eye.<\/p>\n

Although from the outside it would seem a slam dunk to pair Monet and Venice, the truth is that the world might have never known what the storied city of water and bridges looked like through the great impressionist\u2019s eyes. Monet\u2019s visit to Venice had originally been scheduled for a scant two weeks \u2013 hardly enough time for the paint to dry \u2013 but he extended his stay to two months, letting him create dozens of oils.<\/p>\n

Installation view of Monet and Venice. Photograph: Gary Sexton\/Photography by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to emphasize in the exhibition that his trip to Venice was not predestined,\u201d said Buron. \u201cI originally thought \u2018he\u2019s an artist of water and light, of course he would go to Venice,\u2019 but it really almost never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Buron, when Monet and his wife Alice arrived at Venice, the artist was able to fit in to the community of like-minded souls painting the canal-rich city\u2019s most storied sights. Although Monet would have been recognizable to some as a successful painter, the couple was mostly able to blend in among the other tourists. \u201cIt was sort of like a second honeymoon for them to be able to have this experience in their twilight years,\u201d said Buron.<\/p>\n

Monet was friends with Whistler, Sargent, Renoir and Signac, and so was familiar with at least some of their Venice work. While in London sitting out the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, he would have seen Turner\u2019s Venice works in the National Gallery, and he even purchased one of Signac\u2019s post-impressionist Venice paintings of the city\u2019s iconic Santa Maria della Salute church, included in the show.<\/p>\n

Claude Monet \u2013 The Rio della Salute, 1908. Photograph: Courtesy Hasso Plattner Collection \/ Sammlung Hasso Plattner<\/p>\n

While there was a certain rivalry among these painters, it was mostly a friendly one. \u201cI\u2019m sure there was a sense of competition among some of the artists \u2013 they\u2019re each trying to say something about Venice,\u201d said Buron, \u201cbut there was a lot of sharing too, like suggestions about art suppliers to use.\u201d Such suggestions would have come in quite handy \u2013 since Monet had not originally imagined the excursion as an extended artistic enterprise, he had not brought many art supplies to Venice, so it was essential for him to find reliable vendors within the city.<\/p>\n

Monet in Venice is arranged by the various parts of the storied city that the impressionist painted \u2013 the Grand Canal, Palazzo Contarini (which he painted from a gondola), San Giorgio Maggiore church, and the Palazzo Ducale. Most of the sites provide multiple, slightly different versions of the same view of a location, with some outliers, such as the single painting that Monet made of a building called \u201cthe red house\u201d, a striking, firetruck-red dwelling seen across one of Venice\u2019s smaller side canals.<\/p>\n

With so many near-repeating paintings, the show has a slightly different feeling than other shows of major artists. The format encourages a visitor to linger over a given set of canvasses and really absorb them, in order to pick up on the subtle changes to tone, texture, warmth and framing that Monet brought to each particular view of a location.<\/p>\n

Installation view of Monet and Venice at de Young Museum in San Francisco, California. Photograph: Gary Sexton\/Photography by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are subtle variations between them, which I think is really interesting,\u201d said Burton. \u201cFor instance, in the two paintings of the Palazzo Ducale paintings, they look so similar, but you do see one has a slightly warmer glow than the other one.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the show\u2019s final gallery, Burton showcases a number of Monet\u2019s waterlilies, making the case that his time in Venice affected his trajectory with his late masterpieces. As Burton noted, on the eve of his trip to Venice, Monet had actually \u201crenounced the waterlily project \u2018once and for all\u2019\u201d after an underwhelming reaction to the series from his longtime dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, in 1907. But, after returning from Venice, Monet told Durand-Ruel that he had changed his mind and was plowing forward with the waterlilies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Monet being in Venice, where he\u2019s surrounded by water and light every day, it\u2019s plausible that because of that the waterlilies are something that he\u2019s inspired to continue,\u201d said Burton. \u201cAnd we have the evidence of him saying, \u2018I\u2019m going to quit [the waterlilies] once and for all,\u2019 and then coming back to make make even more ambitious work than he had before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claude Monet \u2013 The Palazzo Ducale, Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore, 1908. Photograph: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation \/ Art Resource, NY<\/p>\n

According to Burton, Monet and Venice marks the biggest collection of the artist\u2019s Venice paintings under one roof since his original exhibition of them in 1912. The idea came to her when she was gazing at one of Monet\u2019s depictions of the Grand Canal, which has long been in the collection of the de Young. Enchanted by this gorgeous work, Burton envisioned a gallery full of such paintings. And now audiences in San Francisco<\/a> can see the fruits of her vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the light, and the way that he has captured this really evanescent moment in time. I mean, it\u2019s just so beautiful,\u201d said Burton, \u201cand this idea that he wrote about, it\u2019s too beautiful to be painted, what a fascinating challenge for an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monet and Venice is now on show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, California<\/a>, until 26 July<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Claude Monet was 68 years old before he ever set foot in Venice, surprisingly keeping his distance from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-355813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}