Art Appreciation Blog: Post 14: Impressionists and Venice

"Devilishly hard to paint"

Writing these posts feels like

making a necklace with

gemstones I find while

mining in books, web articles, and museum websites.

My string has to hold them together nicely,

The theme is my pendant

Now here it is, the most brilliant pendant—Venice! We must first visit this city five centuries ago to fully appreciate how Impressionists saw Venice.

The model of modern society, freed from dogmas and focused on individuals, arose from the Renaissance and the Humanism movement in Florence. However, modern art as we know it today - free to choose the subject matter and free to choose how to express it- was born in Venice. Venice and Florence had a long-standing art school rivalry. For instance, painters who favoured drawing would go to Florence, while Venice was for painters who preferred colour as their main tool (being the world's biggest port, a diversity of pigments could be found in abundance).

The first painter to free up his brush, use colours daringly, and focus on the effects of light instead of on detailing the scene is the Venetian Great Master: Titian (1488-1576).

The Rape of Europa, 1559/62
Titian (1488-1576)
178 x 205 cm, oil on canvas
Titian Gardner Museum

This painting was one of 6 in a mythologic/poetic series - "Poesie" that Titian sent to the Spanish King Philip II. They are considered his most ambitious and impressive body of work, painted towards the end of his long career. His paintings were also commissioned by and sent to many other European courts at the time, as well as to the Pope and the wealthiest families. We can say that Titian was in the 16th century what Picasso was in the 20th - "The Painter".

A hundred years later, one of the best painters of the 17th century, Velázquez from Spain, after seeing Titian's work in the Spanish Royal collection and in Venice, painted The Spinners (below), praising the great Venetian and moving art further into modernity.

The Spinners or the Fable of Arachne, 1655/60
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660)
220 x 289 cm, oil on canvas
Velazquez Prado Museum

This painting is, similarly, one of Velázquez's finest works and one of the last ones he painted. The composition and messages would be too long for this post, but crucial to our story is that tapestry behind all the female figures is of Titian's The Rape of Europa painting (that 'little detail' was discovered only in the mid 20th century!). The modern approach is visible in how every figure and object is created by colours; we can not see any lines. The way he captured the movement of the spinning wheel was unprecedented among his peers, as it is today. In addition, the central face in the painting is "unfinished", which was revolutionary for his time, and it will still be when the Impressionists do it 200 years later.

We are arriving in 1865. After visiting Spain and the Prado Museum, Manet tells Baudelaire that Velázquez is the greatest painter ever. Among other elements from Velázquez, Manet excelled at "theatricality" and "flatness." His paintings (like Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia) had to be guarded from haters trying to cut them. As we know now, they were too modern, ahead of their time.

But thanks to him and other Impressionists who followed, standing on the shoulders of the giants, the doors of modern art were finally open, letting individual expression be its new foundation.

And now, we can fully admire how Manet, Renoir, and Monet went back to the "source" to channel their colours freely!

Manet in Venice:

Le Grand Canal à Venise (Blue Venice), 1875

Eduard Manet (1832-1882)

57.5 x 47.9 cm, oil on canvas

Manet Venise Blue

Gazzetta di Venezia, on 13 September 1874, announced the arrival of the "Signori Manet"(he and his wife checked into Grand Hotel, "one of the smartest establishments in town" p.371, Gayford). This was his second and last visit to Venice, which lasted one month during which he painted these two paintings of the Grand Canal. Like in Argenteuil, Manet would go immediately to the water, where he would paint from gondolas and boats.

Several companions and admirers wrote that although Manet's Venice paintings looked deceivingly casual, they were actually painted through the painful process of hours and hours spent on the water and starting over numerous times. The first painting he finished (Venice Blue, above) was sold for almost 52 million dollars by Christie's in November 2022 to a private collector (the public is unable to see it, thank you very much "1%"). The view is of Palazzo Barbaro with its staircase to the water, the exact Palazzo where Monet and his wife will be staying 36 years later.

Le Grand Canal a Venise, 1875

Eduard Manet (1832-1883)

58 x 71 cm, oil on canvas

Shelburn Museum Vermont

What helps me to differentiate Manet from Monet painting, is to imagine if it is a painting with a "sound" or not. Manet will always include people, transport, and whatever makes noise around him while he paints. Monet's paintings are mostly "quiet", with no people, no boats, just air as the main subject, therefore perfect to be looked at with some background music. I would say that Manet's Venice is a bustling city, while Monet's Venice is a true Serenissima.

Inciteful Manet realized that Venice is "devilishly hard" to paint. He told his friend: "faced with such a distractingly complicated scene, I must choose a typical incident and define my picture as if I could already see it framed" (p374, Gayford).

Renoir in Venice:

Venice -Fog, 1881,

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

45.4 x 60 cm, oil on canvas

Renoir Venice Kreeger Museum Washington DC

Venice, The Dodge Palace, 1881
Pierre- August Renoir (1841-1919)
54.5 x 65.7 cm, oil on canvas
Renoir Dodge Palace Clark Museum

The Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1881
Pierre-August Renoir (184101919)
89.5 x 104.46 cm, oil on canvas
Renoir Piazza San Marco Minneapolis Institute of Art

Renoir arrived in Venice in the autumn of 1881, starting his three-month tour of Italy. Further down his journey, he painted more under the influence of classicism, but in Venice, he was still a true Impressionist at heart. These are the three paintings I found from this visit, and for me, they land right between Manet and Monet. We can still see the daily activities and the life of the city, but at the same time, the theme is the fog, the air, the sun reflections, and the atmosphere that 'envelops' the scene as Monet would say. It could be argued, that whenever Renoir holds on to ambiguity and combines it with his uniquely soft brush touches, he rises to the very top, but he had to or chose to compromise his standards occasionally.

Monet in Venice:

Grand Canal, Venice 1908
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
73.7 x 92.4 cm, oil on canvas
MFA Boston - Monet Grand Canal

San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight, 1908

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

65.2 x 92.4 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Venice Museum Wales

Monet arrived in Venice on 8 September (October 1, by some sources) 1908 at the age of 68. He immediately regretted not coming earlier and promised himself and his wife Alice that they would be back next year, saying that "one can never leave Venice without the plan of coming back". A promise not fulfilled. Their only stay in 1908 lasted 10 weeks during which he painted 37 paintings. Not all of them were finished. He returned to them after his wife died in 1911, remembering their happy moments.

Palazzo da Mula, Venice, 1908

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

61.4 x 80.5 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Venice National Gallery of Art Washington DC

In Venice, Monet did not create a series of the same scenes in a different light as he did in France. He would work just on one canvas at a time, choosing in total a dozen views a short distance from each other. He focused on the air, mist, and haze between him and the building he was looking at, or him and the water. He called it "the envelope". He writes in a letter: "The Palace that features in my composition was just an excuse for painting the atmosphere". To me, Monet's Venice is a floating dream.

Le Palais Ducal, 1908

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

81.3 x 99.1 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Venice Brooklyn Museum

The Church of San Giogio Maggiore, Venice, 1908
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
66.36 x 93.66 cm, oil on canvas
Monet Venice Indianapolis Museum of Art

In May 1912, a big exhibition of 29 Monet's Venice paintings opened at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris. It was a huge success for Monet, who was already established as a leading Impressionist. The only painting Monet left unrevised as it had been painted in the 'plein air' was the last - "Gondola in Venice". He gave it to his great friend Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) French Prime Minister of two mandates, who established the separation of church and state in France. Today this painting is in The Nantes Museum of Art.

Gondola in Venice, 3 December 1908
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
81 x 65.2 cm, oil on canvas
Monet Venice Art Museum Nantes

This year, the Brooklyn Museum and the de Young Museum in San Francisco will organize the exhibition Monet & Venice (October 2025 to July 2026).

Sources:

Book Venice City of Pictures by Martin Gayford

Venetian Color and Florentine Design - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arts and Facts: Episode 108: Venetian vs. Florentine Renaissance Art

Mythological paintings (poesie) for Philip II (1553-62)

Titian’s ‘poesie’: The commission | Titian: Love Desire Death | National Gallery, London

The Grand Tour - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

What was the Grand Tour? | Royal Museums Greenwich