Monet,
The Ultimate Impressionist
By Sylvie Patin
Published by Thames & Hudson, 1993

Walking through the NCPA Reference Library one finds one is spoilt for choice. Music, Drama, Art. A look at the blurb of one of the books lining the shelves in the paintings section enables the decision: Monet, The Ultimate Impressionist. “Claude Monet transformed light and colour into art. In 1874 his ‘Impression, Sunrise’ caused an uproar among the critics and a revolution in painting. His inventiveness was inexhaustible: with ‘Haystacks’, ‘Poplars’ and ‘Cathedrals’ and, finally, the enchanting ‘Water Lilies’ of Giverny. Monet captured light in all its fleeting qualities.” But it took the critics and his detractors a long time to arrive at this recognition.

Another lesson learned is that one must not judge a book by its appearance. For this 7”x 5” paperback hardly commands attention. However, the first nine pages of painting after painting are sufficient to make one want to go further. A journey that is fulfilling and rewarding; each page a successful blend of information in the form of documentary witness accounts and letters, and images. The book presents a marvelous combination of being compact, yet comprehensive.

As a young boy, bored with classroom routine, Monet amused himself by drawing caricatures. He even managed to sell some at a stationer, framer and ironmonger’s shop. This brought him a little cash, but more importantly, it brought him in contact with Eugène Boudin, who was beginning to get recognition as a painter. At his suggestion, Monet bought himself a box of paints and accompanied Boudin to Rouelles, a commune in north eastern France. There, “Boudin put up his easel and set to work .... for me it was like the rending of a veil; I understood, I grasped what painting could be ... my destiny as a painter opened up before me. If I have indeed become a painter, I owe it to Eugène Boudin.”

Monet went to the city of Le Havre where he began to associate with well-known painters. He then enrolled in a studio where he could learn the basics of drawing, before taking up painting. But it was at the Paris Salon of 1859 that he noticed ‘a mass of magnificent paintings of the Orient; in all of them there is a certain grandeur, and a warm light’ (letter to Boudin). Perhaps this prompted him to voluntarily enlist in the first regiment of African Light Cavalry in June 1861. “How much my vision benefitted by this,” he was to say later. “The impression of light and colours I received there only fell into place afterwards; but the germ of my future interests emerged in Algeria.”

Monet’s story is the typical story of ups and downs, acceptances and rejections, struggles and, occasionally, depression. He married his model, Camille, who bore him a son. Monet did not earn enough to support the mother and child, especially since his family stopped supporting him. His letters to fellow Impressionist and friend Frédéric Bazille reveal some of his desperation. In spite of his exhibition’s success, he wrote to Bazille in October/November 1868: “My painting isn’t working at all, I no longer expect fame... On top of it all, there is still no money. Disappointments, affronts, hope, more disappointments…” In a later letter came a heartbreaking declaration: “I can’t paint, I haven’t a drop of colour left.” It was Pierre-Auguste Renoir who came to his rescue.

For a man considered to be a painter of open spaces and the sea, a shift to interiors needed to be comprehended. In 1877, Monet embarked on a series of views of both the interior and exterior of the railway station terminal, Gare Saint-Lazare. It was the spectacle of modern technology in action that captivated him more than the human presence. By taking an interest in a place so thoroughly characteristic of the time, Monet showed himself to be a true man of his times. Appreciation of this came from no less a person than Émile Zola. He wrote, “This year he has exhibited some superb railway station scenes. In these one can hear the rumbling of the trains, and see the smoke rolling and flooding through the huge sheds ... Our artists must look to the poetry of railway stations, as their fathers sought that of forests and rivers.” As he matured, Monet experimented with painting cathedrals and monuments in cities—his particular favourites being London and Venice—occasionally bordering on the abstract, as seen in ‘The Cliff at Varengeville’ (1897).

But it was his discovery of Giverny that made Monet the painter we all love and admire. “I am in ecstasy. Giverny is splendid for me”, he wrote in 1883 to Duret, his friend and generous supporter. Seven years later, Monet bought property at Giverny. He expressed his love of the village by painting a series featuring haystacks, now considered seminal works, on his property. All were done with the single purpose of studying the interplay of light and form.

None other than Marcel Proust provides a fitting summing up of Giverny: “If ever I should set eyes on the garden of Claude Monet, I imagine I would find it a place of tints and hues more than of blossoms ... And this garden – which in itself would be more a transposition of art than a subject for paintings, being really a f inished painting, rendered in nature and illumined by the eye of a great artist ... would be the equivalent of a first sketch drawn from life, with its range of colours already settled and delicious, and its tones harmoniously primed.”

As an epilogue, the section titled ‘Documents’ provides further comments, both eulogistic and critical, on Monet’s achievements. A befitting rounding off to the comprehensive understanding of this remarkable artist.

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Vispi Balaporia is President of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai. She has been Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Mumbai, and Vice Principal and Head, Department of English at Jai Hind College.