June Notes - 2024
Thirty years ago this month, I spent five months as an artist-in-residence at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny. That experience morphed into so many others in the intervening year, but it mostly sent me into a deep dive about Monet’s time at Giverny. He moved there just about half way through his life and was the same age I was when I went.
Monet is a tricky one. Like Leonardo da Vinci, its hard to overcome the clichés and see his work with fresh eyes.
With five months in his surroundings and 24/7 access to his garden, made it possible to experience Giverny much as he had.
Cézanne said, “Monet is just an eye, but what an eye.” I concur. The greatest revelation came for we when I awoke at 4 a.m. and followed a trail to a spot where Monet may have painted The Seine at Dawn. I put my camera on a tripod and took a photo every ten minutes. Each photo seemed to correspond with one of his paintings. It was shocking that even one hundred years later the paintings looked remarkably close to the photos, and that what he was capturing only lasted 10 minutes!
The greatest lesson for me was that Monet’s main subject was time. He painted the seasons, the days, the hours of the day, and the minutes of an hour. He talked about painting “the envelop,” that which came between him and his subject matter. Many have described that as the atmosphere, but I don’t think that’s what it is. I think he wanted to paint the primordial “goo” that exists between everything. I believe that he was exploring the same thing Einstein was, only visually.
I made my stab at the subjects I found on his property. It put me on a quest for my own subject matter. I thought it was the light, but now 30 years later, I think it is the “goo.”
See more paintings HERE
PAINTINGS FROM MY TIME AT GIVERNY
RECENT PAINTINGS INFLUENCED BY GIVERNY
BLOGS ABOUT GIVERNY
HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: MONET’S LEGACY
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Ellsworth Kelly (top image) visited Giverny after WWII, and he was directly influenced by what he saw in the garden. This was about 20 years after Monet's death, but I believe his step-daughter, Blanche, was still there. The green of the painting is one I recognize. The pond was this color with the addition of black most of July and August.
Cy Twombly captures the same color, but has added the black. This is something that you see in Monet's pond, not from his paintings. I always felt that the unusual shaped canvas that Twombly used was related to the shape of the architectural details in Durand Ruel's Paris apartment, and in that sense was also a nod to the commissioned pieces that Monet did for both him and Hoschède, which were intended for a specific site and had to take into account the fin de siecle architecture.
Joan Mitchell lived in Vetheil, a town along the Seine where Monet lived with Camille, Alice Hoschede and her six children and his two children. Her work is inextricably linked to Monet, although I do not know if she spent much time in Giverny.
FROM THE LIBRARY : JACKIE WULLSCHLÄGER: THE RESTLESS VISION
Both Wullschläger’s Monet The Restless Vision and Marianne Alphant’s Claude Monet, Une Vie dans le Paysage are biographies that were written when new original documents became available, in particular, the diaries of Alice Hoschède. I have always wondered how the still married Alice Hoschède, wife of Monet’s collector Ernest Hoschède, ended up in Giverny along with her six children. Alphant may have identified the moment when the affair between Alice and Monet began. Wullschläger does a great deal to flesh out the relationship. But questions remain. It doesn’t help that Alice burnt all the letters of Monet’s first wife, Camille, and Monet burnt all of Alice’s letters. There are clues in the paintings, if one knows where to look.
AT THE MOVIES: JEAN RENOIR’S LA GRANDE ILLUSION
La Grande Illusion (French for "The Grand Illusion") is a 1937 French war drama film directed by Jean Renoir, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Spaak. The story concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are German prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape.
La Grande Illusion is regarded by critics and film historians as one of the masterpieces of French cinema[2] and among the greatest films ever made. Orson Welles named La Grande Illusion as one of the two movies he would take with him "on the ark".[3] [wikipedia]
You may wonder why I would include this in a Studio Note about Giverny. Toward the end of Monet’s life he worked on a series of waterlily paintings that he offered to the French State on the day that followed the Armistice of November 11, 1918 as a symbol for peace, the Water Lilies are installed according to plan at the Orangerie Museum in 1927, a few months after his death.
He was aided in this project by Clemenceau, a leader during World War I, later the Prime Minister of France and Monet’s best friend in later life. Monet’s son served in the war.
This film, which was made by the son of August-Pierre Renoir, Monet’s dear friend from his youth, seems an apt companion to the late lily paintings.
ART SPOTLIGHT: LATE EVENING LILY
Late Evening Lily, oil on shaped canvas, ©1995 Leslie Parke
Late Evening Lily is one of the paintings from Giverny. It bridges the shaped paintings I did before going to Giverny and what came afterwards. It is currently in a private collection. The owner is downsizing and is interested in selling the painting. If you are interested, please contact me and I will put you in touch.
See more available nature paintings here.
The blog post describes how the author's experience at Giverny inspired a series of boxing paintings, influenced by the colors and atmosphere of the impressionist style.