Monet in Edinburgh

Magazine Antiques, August, 2003 by Miriam Kramer

In 1878 Claude Monet moved to Vetheuil, a quiet town on the Seine near Vernon northwest of Paris. The move changed the range of his subject matter from modem industrial and suburban life to the landscapes and seascapes of his new environs and of nearby Normandy, where be had grown up. In 1883, with the advent of success, he was able to acquire a house in Normandy--at Givemy

The National Gallery of Scotland has mounted two major Monet exhibitions in the past. This month it opens a third, entitled Monet: The Seine and the Sea--Vetheuil and Normandy 1878--1 883, which may be seen until October 26. The exhibition, sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland, comprises some eighty landscape paintings dating from Monet's years in Vetheuil and Normandy In addition, there are a group of portraits and still lifes painted during the same period and a small selection of paintings by French landscape painters whom Monet admired, such as Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and Charles Francois Daubigny.

The curators of the show are Michael Clarke and Richard Thomson, who contributed to the accompanying catalogue. It can be ordered from the Antique Collectors' Club by telephoning 800-252-5231.

The exhibition is the first to be held in the refurbished Royal Scottish Academy which is adjacent to the National Gallery of Scotland. Both were designed by the nineteenth-century English-born Scottish architect William Henry Playfair The refurbished academy gives the National Gallery of Scotland space for temporary exhibitions as well as education and visitor facilities--none of which it had before. The final stage of what is known as the Playfair Project will be to build an underground extension linking the academy and the gallery. The architects of the Playfair Project are John Miller and Partners, and the estimated cost is [pounds sterling]26 million.