Monet exhibit - Claude Monet traveling exhibit - Gardeners' Gazette

Flower & Garden Magazine, Dec-Jan, 1994

Gardeners with an interest in art can look forward to a special treat. A rare traveling exhibit of works by the French impressionist Claude Monet will be shown at the New Orleans Museum of Art from January 7, 1995, through March 12. The exhibit will continue to San Francisco, its only other American stop, where it will be on display at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum from March 25 through May 28.

"Monet: Late Paintings of Giverny from the Musee Marmottan" features 22 paintings on loan from the Parisian museum, eight of which have never before been shown in this country.

The exhibit focuses on Monet's later works -- modern paintings that are softly focused, yet richly colored. Roses, water lilies, wisteria, daylilies, irises and weeping willows in his renowned gardens at Giverny, located outside Paris, are among the subjects of the paintings, some of which are mural-sized.

Monet was one of the foremost artists of the impressionist movement, a group of painters that also includes Edgar Degas and Paul Renoir. These innovative artists rejected the stiff, theatrical style of late 19th century art. Instead, they rendered fresh images of the everyday pleasures of Parisian life and landscapes in bright colors with a loosely brushed style of painting that imitated the natural effects of light and shadow.

Although Monet's career as an artist began in 1865 with exhibits in Parisian galleries, it wasn't until 1903 that he had become so well established in the art world -- selling his works with ease -- that he could afford to retreat to his house and gardens at Giverny. He began painting there almost exclusively. The aging Monet, by then hampered by physical limitations and deteriorating eyesight, began working on large canvases and developing a near-abstract style. Broad, energetic brushstrokes of vibrant color float on his canvases; similarly his water lilies, wisteria and other botanical subjects appear without visual reference to the ground or horizon. Works from this significant period will be on view for the museum-going public.

To give museum audiences an appropriate framework for viewing Monet's artful interpretations of the garden and the botanical subjects around him, there will also be a related exhibit of color photographs of the gardens as they are today. Schematic ground plans and color photo murals suggest the lushness of the painter's environment.

Photographer Elizabeth Murray first photographed Monet's garden in 1985. Four years later she returned to Giverny with permission to work there and photograph the changing seasons. Her images capture how Monet, with his sophisticated horticultural knowledge, manipulated nature as skillfully as his paint on a canvas. Additionally, Elizabeth Murray will present a slide lecture of Monet's paintings blended with photographs of the gardens February 2 and 3.

For tickets or more information on the Monet exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art, call 504-488-2631 or 800-853-6391. For tickets and information on the exhibit at San Francisco's M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, call 415-750-3600.