AFA Winter 2019

Winter 102 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com Fig. 8: Claude Monet (1840–1926), Under the Poplars, 1887. Oil on canvas, 28¾ x 36¼ inches. Private collection. landscape and it’s the enchantment of it that I’m so keen to render. Of course lots of people will protest that it’s quite unreal and that I’m out of my mind, but that’s just too bad.”  6 During the later part of his life, Monet began to focus on painting series of the same subject, and the exhibition offers examples of his grainstacks (Fig. 7), poplars (Fig. 8), Waterloo Bridge, and mornings on the Seine, culminating with a gallery dedicated to his water lilies. It was in Giverny, where he had rented a home since 1883, purchasing it and settling in permanently in 1890, that he began creating his magnificent garden, a masterpiece of color and exotic plants that offered an endless source of motifs, in particular, the reflective world of his water lily pond. Works in this section range from early examples (Fig. 9), which still reference the physical structure of the Japanese-style bridge, to late canvases where the same bridge seems to dissolve into the surroundings, rendered with radical, free brushstrokes that anticipate the abstract tendencies of mid- twentieth-century painting (Fig. 10). Monet loved to immerse himself in nature, preferably in solitude, but his rapport was not dictated by the romantic notion of nature’s superiority over man. Despite his occasional lamenting of the overwhelming beauty of the landscapes before him, Monet sought to control his environment, both in nature and on the canvas. This tendency to direct his life was apparent in anything concerning his business matters, the time he ate every day, and his carefully planned garden in Giverny. Even Alice Hoschedé admitted matter-of-factly to her daughter Germaine Salerou on October 27, 1904, that “Monet, who leaves nothing to chance, asks me to tell you to start dining if we are not here by 7:30.”  7 Indeed Monet left nothing to chance, and to him nature could be disappointing, not so much in its unpredictable manifestations— although his letters contain numerous complaints of unfavorable weather—but in not providing at times the “right” motif, the one he was seeking. Again, Alice to her daughter on January 1, 1909: