"Monet: The Early Years" at San Francisco Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum

The forever popular French impressionist painter Claude Monet made his somewhat unusual appearance in San Francisco Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum, in an exhibition titled Monet: The Early Years (February 25, 2017 through May 29, 2017), featuring his mostly engaging early paintings, some of them were already in the realm of later famed impressionism.

The first piece or pieces to greet the audience amazed us by the unusual shape of the wok(s). The ensemble had two framed pieces of different sizes, cut from the same and much larger painting. The square one on the right side, centering on two seated people at a picnic, was collected by Musée d'Orsay in Paris, titled 'Luncheon on the Grass, Central Panel' (1865–66), while the slender and tall panel on the left side, featuring back view of three people at the perimeter of the picnic, hailed from a private collection. What a fascinating family reunion. I also wondered where the "right" panel might be.



The rest of the exhibition was organized in chronological order, well suited to demonstrate the development of Monet as an artist. Here, I will largely follow this arrangement, with some re-grouping according to subject matters.

In the first room, we saw some landscapes, and one can see their affinity to the works by early French greats such as Corot, and Courbet. These landscape were much weightier and earthier than his more celebrated later pieces.


The Pointe de La Hève at Low Tide, 1865. Oil on canvas, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas



Next were some winter scenes, a genre quite different from typical impressionism works closely associated with often colorful domains under joyous and sunshine. However, even in winter, the shifting lights were clearly a main contributing factor to the sense of drama, though somewhat subdued.


A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur (1865), Musée d’Orsay




The Magpie (1869), Musée d’Orsay

There were some paintings depicting scenes in cities, painted while Monet visited the Netherlands and UK, and those works had similar characteristics of his early landscapes.



But, some of the brushstrokes Monet employed had become noticeably looser and more fluid.


Hyde Park, 1871, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence




The Pont Neuf in Paris (1871), Dallas Museum of Art

With water, Monet had his most solid footing, and the results were dynamic and engrossing. Immersed in a room full of such paintings, one felt the strong need to hold breath, in case the splashing water entered one's lungs.




The Green Wave. (1886) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York





One of my favorite pieces in this show was the "Fishing Boat" below, which was rich in texture and subtle in tonal variances, and almost reached the state of abstract, which caused its rejection by an exhibiting salon, yet a virtue in the later era.


Fishing Boats

Monet's water scenes with people was always very interesting, especially the way he portrayed the slight melancholy, and the endlessly shifting patterns of water. His ability to depict still or slightly rippled water bodies was astounding, despite the fact that such way of painting had inevitably lost its novelty.




On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt (1868)




On the Beach in Trouville



Monet didn't frequently paint people as pure portraits — most of his people were immersed in outdoor or indoor settings, and became part of the fabrics — a few such pure portraits from his early period were included in the show, and I was very taken in by a portrait of Camille Monet, who stood in snow, in her bright red shawl, turned her upper torso slightly, and timidly or inquisitively peered into the closed French door. An intriguing scene, worthy of Chekhov or Ibsen.


The Red Kerchief: Portrait of Camille Monet (ca. 1868-1873), Cleveland Museum of Art 


The Cradle—Camille with the Artist’s Son Jean (1867, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)


Jean Monet Sleeping (1867–1868, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen)



There were also some still life paintings in the exhibit, probably as answers to friendly challenges lobbed from some accomplished painters. Or rainy day consolations for the sun-obsessed Monet.




Still Life with Melon (1872, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon)


Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- My Favorite Paintings at Musée Marmottan Monet
- My Favorite Paintings at Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
- My Favorite Paintings from Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- My Favorite Paintings from Musée Picasso, Paris
- My Favorite Artworks at Musée National Eugène Delacroix, Paris
- Impressionism from National Gallery of Art (DC) in San Francisco
- Last Call - "The Girl With A Pearl Earring" in De Young Museum, San Francisco
- Modernism from the National Gallery of Art in De Young Museum, San Francisco

Monet at Grand Palais

New York Times reported recently that In France, Monet Is Rediscovered:

In the city where his art was once ridiculed as unworthy of wallpaper, Claude Monet is making a showy comeback. He is being lionized in two expansive exhibitions in Paris this season, and two French museums — the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Marmottan Monet — have been feuding over his mythic painting of a misty orange and gray sunrise.

Monet, who was born in Paris and once scorned by its intellectuals, made more than 2,500 paintings and drawings before he died in 1926 at age 86 and is the focus of an exhibition that opened Wednesday at the Grand Palais. It is the largest retrospective of his works in France in 30 years, and more than 83,000 people have already reserved tickets for the show, which runs through Jan. 24. The exhibition was organized by the Musée d’Orsay with the Grand Palais, a national arts exhibition center near the Champs-Elysées.

One can see why Monet was not revered by intellectuals - his wild popularity is suspicious to begin with.  He is not intellectual like Paul Cézanne, nor sensualist like Pierre Bonnard, or exotic like Paul Gauguin, or crazy like Vincent van Gogh.  He was too popular and too picturesque.  But, these constitute no reason to rate him lower than those other lions.  Monet was a pensive observer and he described the world through his particular lenses.  His style of serene detachment was valid in its own way and he was the both the originate and the master practitioner of his style and that says a lot.

New York Time's follow up article, Paris Rediscovers Monet’s Magic at Grand Palais reviewed the exhibit with such description:

But Proust also meant that Monet didn't just idealize places; he wasn't just a French weatherman with paints. He showed us Argenteuil and Belle-Île, the Houses of Parliament in London and the banks of the Seine, vibrating with electric color, "parts of the world," as Proust said, "that are themselves and nothing but themselves," places that already existed in our imagination, as if waiting to be discovered and that now bid for our affection.

"On the threshold of love we are bashful," Proust noted. “There has to be someone who will say to us, 'Here is what you may love: love it.'"

Monet does exactly that.

New York Times Image