“Monet and Venice” is the third San Francisco exhibit of Claude Monet’s paintings in less than 10 years, following “Monet: the Early Years” and “Monet: the Late Years” at the Legion of Honor and de Young museums.
Granted, the enduring popularity of Impressionism stems from a single one of Monet’s paintings displayed in Paris in 1872, but what more is there to say? What to see?
Turns out there’s plenty, beginning with more than 20 paintings of Venice that Monet produced in 1908 during his visit to the city he initially thought would be “too beautiful to paint.” But that’s just a fraction of the trove on display in a new de Young exhibit, running through July 26.
Monet’s paintings of Venice fill only one of the exhibit’s five galleries. There are another 100 items on the walls and in display cases.
There are works by Monet painted before and after his two-month sojourn in Venice, including two versions of the iconic water lilies. There are paintings, watercolors and prints by Canaletto, Turner and Monet’s American contemporaries John Singer Sargent and James McNeil Whistler. There are vintage postcards, photographs and a copy of John Ruskin’s influential book from the 1850s, “The Stones of Venice.”
Monet’s “Palazzo Contarini” (1908) is as much a painting of water as of architecture. The work is on display at the de Young. (Hasso Plattner Collection/Sammlung Hasso Plattner)
In 1908, at the age of 68, Monet was reluctant to travel to Venice. But the paintings he produced there (and completed at home in France) were stunning atmospheric studies that transcend the already-familiar settings. They’re the core of the de Young show.
“Although Monet visited Venice only once, his paintings of the city are among his most dazzling,” says Thomas Campbell, director of San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums, which include the de Young and the Legion. “Unlike bustling scenes painted by other artists, Monet’s Venice is hauntingly deserted, with its architecture, buildings and canals dissolving in an atmospheric light.”
Of course it was the atmospheric light that Monet wanted to convey, not just the details of architecture, canals and gondolas.
“His Venetian paintings are among the most luminous and poetic of his career,” says Melissa E. Buron, the exhibition co-curator.
Multiple versions of “The Grand Canal, Venice” (one from the Fine Arts Museums’ own collection) offer a chance to study Monet’s myriad colors and brushstrokes from one canvas to another. There’s a bench handy in the gallery for a study session.
“Twilight, Venice” and “San Giorgio Maggiore, Twilight,” essentially the same vista, offer dazzling, almost-Technicolor drama, the water and sky enveloping the church structure.
“The Palazzo Contarini” seems to focus on moody architecture, but the real subject, filling more than half the canvas, is the reflection of the palace facade on the water. It’s placid and blue, yet so much more.
“The Palazzo Ducale, Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore,” such a familiar Venetian Gothic landmark, is nearly swallowed by “atmosphere” in several of its many depictions.
Claude Monet and his wife, Alice, make a few feathered friends during their trip to Venice in 1908. It was Alice who convinced her husband that he should travel to the city. French Photographer/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).
Of course Monet wasn’t the only artist setting up his easel in a gondola or a canal-side passageway early in the 20th century. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was depicting the Palazzo Ducale as well, and reported, “There were at least six of us queuing up to paint it.”
Monet’s wife Alice bemoaned the “frightening number of painters.”
The exhibit’s celebration of Venice continues beyond Monet’s paintings. A good starting point, also from the Fine Arts Museums’ collection, is Canaletto’s 1749-50 depiction of “Venice, the Grand Canal Looking East with Santa Maria della Salute.”
Among the artists of Monet’s era represented, J.M.W. Turner’s watercolors are also devoted to atmosphere, John Singer Sargent depicts the Venetian populace that Monet disregards, and Paul Signac stirs up a lively, colorful St. Mark’s lagoon with sailboats.
Monet’s trip to Venice, which his wife Alice had encouraged, rejuvenated him at a time he was unsure of proceeding with an exhibit of his water lily paintings.
“My trip to Venice has had the advantage of making me see my (water lily) canvases with a better eye,” he said.
Yes, Monet’s famed “Water Lilies” painting, from 1914-17, are part of the de Young exhibit. (Photograph by Randy Dodson/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
The Venice canvases would go on exhibit in a Paris gallery in 1912. Meanwhile, in 1909, Monet exhibited 49 water lily paintings to critical acclaim. “Without Venice,” noted de Young curator Buron, “the work for which Monet is best known might not have reached the height of its creative expression.”
The result was, she said, “an indisputably triumphant career comeback.”
‘MONET AND VENICE’
Through: July 26
Where: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Hours are 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.
Admission: $25-$40, famsf.org